Now comes the culminating experiment, the circumstances of which are the more worthy of being carefully noted, because it is distinctly stated by Dr. Richardson that none of the experiments described in this narrative, apocryphal though they may really be, can be regarded as beyond the range of scientific possibilities:--"Arrived at the works in Middle Harbour, I was taken into the building that contains Mr. Grant's apparatus for generating cold.... Attached to this is the freezing chamber, a small, dark room, about eight feet by ten. Here were fourteen sheep, four lambs, and three pigs, stacked on their sides in a heap, _alive_, which Mr. Grant told me had been in their present position for nineteen days, and were to remain there for another three months. Selecting one of the lambs, Signor Rotura put it on his shoulder, and carried it outside into the other building, where a number of shallow cemented tanks were in the floor, having hot and cold water taps to each tank, with a thermometer hanging alongside. One of these tanks was quickly filled, and its temperature tested by the Signor, I meantime examining with the greatest curiosity and wonder the nineteen-days-dead lamb. The days of miracles truly seem to have come back to us, and many of those stories discarded as absurdities seem to me less improbable than this fact, witnessed by myself. There was the lamb, to all appearance dead, and as hard almost as a stone, the only difference perceptible to me between his condition and actual death being the absence of dull glassiness about the eye, which still retained its brilliant transparency. Indeed, this brilliancy of the eye, which is heightened by the enlargement of the pupil, is very striking, and lends a rather weird appearance to the bodies. The lamb was gently dropped into the warm bath, and was allowed to remain in it about twenty-three minutes, its head being raised above the water twice for the introduction of the thermometer into its mouth, and then it was taken out and placed on its side on the floor, Signor Rotura quickly dividing the wool on its neck, and inserting the sharp point of a small silver syringe under the skin and injecting the antidote. This was a pale green liquid, and, as I believe, a decoction from the root of the _Astracharlis_, found in South America. The lamb was then turned on its back, Signor Rotura standing across it, gently compressing its ribs with his knees and hands in such a manner as to imitate their natural depression and expansion during breathing. In ten minutes the animal was struggling to free itself, and when released skipped out through the door and went gambolling and bleating over the little garden in front. Nothing has ever impressed me so entirely with a sense of the marvellous. One is almost tempted to ask, in the presence of such a discovery, whether death itself may not ultimately be baffled by scientific investigation." In the Lunar Hoax there is a passage