In Vienna the use of arsenic is of every-day occurrence among horse-dealers, and especially with the coachmen of the nobility. They either shake it in a pulverized state among the corn, or they tie a bit the size of a pea in a piece of linen, which they fasten to the curb when the horse is harnessed, and the saliva of the animal soon dissolves it. The sleek, round, shining appearance of the carriage-horses, and especially the much-admired foaming at the mouth, is the result of this arsenic-feeding.(4) It is a common practice with the farm-servants in the mountainous parts to strew a pinch of arsenic on the last feed of hay before going up a steep road. This is done for years without the least unfavorable result; but should the horse fall into the hands of another owner who withholds the arsenic, he loses flesh immediately, is no longer lively, and even with the best feeding there is no possibility of restoring him to his former sleek appearance. The above particulars, communicated by a contributor residing in Germany, are curious only inasmuch as they refer to poisons of a peculiarly quick and deadly nature. Our ordinary “indulgences” in this country are the same in kind, though not in degree, for we are all poison-eaters. To say nothing of our opium and alcohol consumers, our teetotallers are delighted with the briskness and sparkle of spring-water, although these qualities indicate the presence of carbonic acid or fixed air. In like manner, few persons will object to a drop or two of the frightful corrosive, sulphuric acid (vitriol), in a glass of water, to which it communicates an agreeably acid taste; and most of us have, at some period or other of our lives, imbibed prussic acid, arsenic, and other deadly poisons under the orders of the physician, or the first of these in the more pleasing form of confectionary. Arsenic is said by Dr. Pearson to be as harmless as a glass of wine in the quantity of one-sixteenth part of a grain; and in the cure of agues it is so certain in its effects, that the French Directory once issued an edict ordering the surgeons of the Italian army, under pain of military punishment, to banish that complaint, at two or three days’ notice, from among the vast numbers of soldiers who were languishing under it in the marshes of Lombardy. It would seem that no poison taken in small and diluted doses is immediately hurtful, and the same thing may be said of other agents. The tap of a fan, for instance, is a _blow_, and so is the stroke of a club; but the one gives an agreeable sensation, and the other fells the recipient to the ground. In like manner the analogy holds good between the distribution of a blow over a comparatively large portion of the surface of the body and the dilution or distribution of the particles of a poison. A smart thrust upon the breast, for instance, with a foil does no injury; but if the button is removed, and the same momentum