Exposed for a long time to ebullition, as in common boiled meat, the muscular texture, still united to the adjacent organs, and to its common parts, gives, 1st, an albuminous scum which appears to arise more from the lymph of the cells than from the muscle itself; 2d, many fatty drops coming also especially from the cellular texture, almost foreign consequently to the texture of the muscle, and which swim on its surface; 3d, gelatine formed especially by the aponeurotic intersections; 4th, an extractive substance which colours in part the water in which it is boiled, gives it a peculiar taste and remains in part adherent to the flesh to which it communicates a deep tinge wholly different from that of raw flesh, a tinge which arises also from the colouring matter of the muscle, and which moreover changes, when the liquor cools, into a less deep and even a whitish tinge; 5th, various salts which contribute much to the taste of the liquor, and the nature of which chemists have ascertained. These are the natural phenomena of the ebullition of the muscle. The more extensive analysis of boiled flesh is not my province; but what ought not to escape us here, are the phenomena of which the fibre is the seat, whilst the preceding products are extracted, whether from it, or the surrounding textures. These phenomena can be referred to three periods. 1st. When the water is only tepid, and even a little above the temperature of the body, it leaves the muscular texture in the same state, or softens it a little. 2d. When it approaches ebullition and begins to be covered with an albuminous scum, the texture crisps, thickens and contracts and gives to the muscle a density much greater than what is natural to it, and augments considerably its resistance. I have observed that in this state the muscles bear much greater weights than in a natural state. They approximate, if we may so say, that remarkable density which characterizes them when they contract in the living body, and which so powerfully opposes their rupture. This condensation of the muscular texture, which is prompt and sudden, increases till the period of ebullition, when it is at its greatest height; it continues only for a certain time. 3d. Gradually it diminishes, the fibres soften, and are more easily torn than in their natural state. This softening, the reverse of the hardening that precedes, is produced slowly and by degrees. When arrived to a certain degree, the meat is rendered fit for the table. Observe that then the muscle has not returned to the state in which it was found before the hardening; among other phenomena which distinguish it, the following is an essential one; it has lost the power of crisping, of acquiring the horny hardness, from the action of the concentrated acids, from alkohol or from caloric. In general it becomes putrid more slowly. Its putrefaction does not give the same odour. We know how much its taste differs. The principles it has lost