Note 53 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

An instance of the indestructibility of strychnia was communicated by Mr. F. Crace Calvert, F.C.S., to the London journals subsequently to the trial. In 1849 several hounds of a pack in Cheshire were poisoned and one brought to his laboratory, from which, by the usual process, strychnia was obtained. “As the master of the hounds attached great importance to the case, he requested me,” writes Mr. Calvert, “to obtain a sufficient amount of poison from the stomachs of some other of the dead dogs, that I might not only be convinced of the presence of the poison, but might also bring some of the extracted strychnia into court. To enable me to do so, several dogs were disinterred and brought to my laboratory, and the space of time from the date of death to that when I submitted them to analysis was at least three weeks, and I still perfectly succeeded in extracting strychnia from their stomachs and exhibiting it in the state of crystallised hydrochlorate.”—Appendix to Letter to Lord Campbell, p. xxix. Another correspondent to the Times called attention to the practice in Mexico of killing a worn-out mule with nux vomica, leaving its carcase to be eaten by the wolves, which are thus killed, and that the Turkey buzzards who feed on the dead wolves also die of the poison.—Ib. p. xxv.