. Animal mechanism: a treatise on terrestrial and aërial locomotion. Animal locomotion; Flight. 58 ANIMAL MECHANISM. instant (e), and the electricity of its discharges was collected by means of conducting wires which sent it to the nerve of the frog signal. This would give its shock at the point {t).. Fig. 12.—Measure of the time which elapses between the excitation of the electric nerve, and the discharge of the torpedo. The difference (g t) would express the time consumed by the torpedo between the excitetion of its nerve and the dis- charge. By varying the experiment, as we have done for th
. Animal mechanism: a treatise on terrestrial and aërial locomotion. Animal locomotion; Flight. 58 ANIMAL MECHANISM. instant (e), and the electricity of its discharges was collected by means of conducting wires which sent it to the nerve of the frog signal. This would give its shock at the point {t).. Fig. 12.—Measure of the time which elapses between the excitation of the electric nerve, and the discharge of the torpedo. The difference (g t) would express the time consumed by the torpedo between the excitetion of its nerve and the dis- charge. By varying the experiment, as we have done for the motive nerves (page 43), we obtain the measure of the rapidity of the electric nervous agent, and that of the lost time in the torpedo apparatus.* Finally, in order to measure the duration of the electrical action, we had recourse to a method which consists in col- lecting this discharge during a very short time (1-100th of a second) to send it to the frog signal, and varying gradually the instant at which the electricity of the torpedo was collected. It was thus ascertained that starting from the point (t) one might, during 14-lOOthsof a second, obtain a series of signals from the frog—1\ t'\ t''\ but that beyond that time the frog gave no signals, thus proving that the discharge had terminated. We have not been able to follow out farther the compari- son of the electric with the muscular action; but, according to the results already furnished by experiment, we can foresee * Deprived of appropriate apparatus, we have been obliged to construct for ourselves a kind of registering instrument which should measure short intervals of time with sufficient precision. We refer the reader, for the real arrangement of the experiments, to the Journal de Tanatomie et de la physiologic," loc. cit. Fig. 12 represents tracings which one would obtain with the registering instruments already Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have b
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectflight, bookyear1874
