Exposed to the action of water, the muscle undergoes different phenomena, according as it is hot or cold. Cold water takes from it at first its red colour, of which it appears to dissolve the principle. To effect quickly this phenomenon, it is necessary to expose the flesh, at first in thin layers, to the action of water that is often changed, by placing a muscle for example under a fountain, in the current of a river, or what is much better, by frequently expressing the water it imbibes; for if we keep it in a vessel, its exterior only whitens a little, and the interior preserves its colour. Water which has been used to wash a muscle, looks like blood spread out in this fluid; it contains the colouring matter, a little of the extractive substance, gelatine, &c. I believe that of all the organs the muscle is that from which we remove most easily its colour by artificial means. Ought we to be astonished after this, if nature varies so evidently and so frequently this colour by the phenomena of nutrition, as we soon shall have occasion to remark? Kept in water at a moderate temperature, the muscular texture remains for a long time without softening; it finally does, and changes layer by layer into a kind of putridity very different however from that which is formed in the open air, as I have frequently observed in macerating the muscles in a cellar, the temperature of which is uniform. At other times, instead of putrefying thus, the muscle is changed, as Fourcroy has remarked, into a substance like spermaceti; then its fibre is hard and solid. But all the muscles when kept in water by no means exhibit this phenomenon. When it does take place, very often a kind of reddish product, scattered here and there on the surface of the muscle, and which is an evident effect of decomposition, announces and afterwards accompanies this state, without which also, it often takes place. Maceration in dissecting rooms frequently exhibits this phenomenon.