A young animal may not so soon perish as an older one; and a strong and healthy individual may survive during a longer period than a creature that is in a state of debility. By filling the lungs with air a person may also be enabled to dispense with the act of respiration for a longer period; _Mr. Kite_ made a very deep inspiration of 300 cubic inches, and was thus enabled to retain this quantity for 72 seconds, without a fresh inspiration; and divers in the pearl fisheries, inspire deeply before they descend. It has been, moreover, established by numerous experiments that the demand for oxygen in the lungs is materially influenced by the nature of the ingesta received into the stomach; _Mr. Spalding_, the celebrated diver, observed, that whenever he used a diet of animal food, or drank spirituous liquors, he consumed in a much shorter time the oxygen of the atmospheric air in his diving-bell; and therefore he had learned from experience to confine himself to a vegetable diet, and water, when following his avocation. And the priest, or conjurer (_Pillal Karras_, in the Malabar language) who attends the divers in the pearl fisheries of the east, enjoins, as a religious duty, an abstinence from all food, before he plunges into the ocean. Muscular exertions, as in the act of struggling, will without doubt contribute to the expenditure of oxygen, and increase the demand for it, and therefore in its absence such movement must accelerate death by suffocation; this physiological fact will be hereafter more fully elucidated. Footnote 26: We anticipate the objections that will be urged against the truth of this assertion. It will be asked how it can be reconciled with the accounts of persons who have recovered after an asphyxia of a much longer duration? It may be inquired how the statement can be reconciled with the ordinary histories of divers, who have become so expert in the art which they profess, as to be capable of remaining beneath the water for twenty minutes, or even for a longer period: we are bound to consider such statements as no better than extravagant fables; not more authentic, says _Mr. Brodie_ (Manuscript Notes), but certainly less poetical and elegant, than those of the nymphs and mermaids, whose ordinary residence is in grottos beneath the waves of the sea; or than those Arabian fictions which have amused and astonished our youthful imaginations with the description of the Princes who govern the submarine nations, and pass their lives in palaces of crystal at the bottom of the ocean—but of this we shall speak more fully hereafter. Footnote 27: Although the term ASPHYXIA merely signifies the absence of the pulse, yet the name is erroneously applied to every apparent loss of vitality. Footnote 28: