bottles within which float reptilian and batrachian specimens, preserved in alcohol. To alcohol, also, we are indebted for various anæsthetic agents, which, when not abused (p. 340), are of inestimable value. Thus, if certain proportions of alcohol and nitric acid be mixed together and heated, nitrite of amyl, so serviceable in relieving the agonizing spasms peculiar to that dread disease, angina pectoris, will be obtained. If, instead of nitric, we use sulphuric acid, we shall get ether; if chlorine be passed through alcohol, hydrate of chloral is the result; and, if chloride of lime and alcohol be treated together, the outcome is chloroform. One of the most striking properties of alcohol, and one which we shall hereafter consider in its disastrous effects upon the tissues of our body, is its affinity for water. [Footnote: Suppose, then, a certain measure of alcohol be taken into the stomach, it will be absorbed there, but, previous to absorption, it will have to undergo a proper degree of dilution with water; for there is this peculiarity respecting alcohol when it is separated by an animal membrane from a watery fluid like the blood, that it will not pass through the membrane until it has become charged, to a given point of dilution, with water. Alcohol is itself, in fact, so greedy for water that it will pick it up from watery textures, and deprive them of it until, by its saturation, its power of reception is exhausted, after which it will diffuse into the current of circulating fluid.