Such metaphorical expressions may pass for the poetry of pathology, but hitherto have stood in the way of deep research. Ingestion is expedited by sleep, in consequence of the accumulation of minus-pressure matter in the gastric region and stomach at the time; and sleep is promoted by imperfect mastication causing a deficiency of saliva in the stomach which is compensated by minus-pressure matter of the thus provoked comatose flow. The pollparrot masticates but little, if at all, and sleeps regularly after breakfast. USE OF THE INSPIRED OXYGEN WITHIN THE SYSTEM. There is none of the inspired oxygen returned to the lungs by the circulation. What becomes of it, or what its use within the system, has not been written for our learning. It is not retained in the blood, nor is it animalised; nothing yields less oxygen than animal matter. To convey "carbon" out of the system, and somehow purify the blood, is the supposed service; but if so, should it not be included in every expiration and of the inspiration quantity? but which is not the case. Harvey proved that the blood circulates, but left undiscovered what keeps in motion the _inert_ fluid, except the systole, which the _inert_ heart cannot effect on itself. No organ can do anything of itself, the whole being composed of inert substance, and nothing else; even the life of the body, whatever it may be, leaves the function of every organ, not excepting that of the brain, dependent on the general pressure. By the general pressure the air is forced into, but not through or beyond the lungs which it inflates, and inflates nothing else. Within the blood-vessels it would prove fatal; and although from it the blood derives that by which it becomes arterialised, yet the blood and air do not come in contact, extravasation and pulmonary rupture must happen, did the lungs permit the blood and air coming together, or in immediate contact. Of the air of an inspiration, the oxygenating imponderable element only can permeate the pulmonary tissue. This element it is which imponderably arterialises the blood; the nitrogen of the inspiration constitutes the immediate succeeding exspiration.