was in a fever of excitement over the drug for a twelvemonth.

The Professor obtained his first hint of the new body by a mere
accident. His friend, the Deputy Prosector of the Zoological Society,
had mixed a draught for a sick raccoon at the Gardens, and, by some
mistake in a bottle, had mixed it wrongly. (I purposely refrain from
mentioning the ingredients, as they are drugs which can be easily
obtained in isolation at any chemist's, though when compounded they form
one of the most dangerous and difficult to detect of organic poisons.
I do not desire to play into the hands of would-be criminals.) The
compound on which the Deputy Prosector had thus accidentally lighted
sent the raccoon to sleep in the most extraordinary manner. Indeed, the
raccoon slept for thirty-six hours on end, all attempts to awake him, by
pulling his tail or tweaking his hair being quite unavailing. This was
a novelty in narcotics; so Sebastian was asked to come and look at the
slumbering brute. He suggested the attempt to perform an operation on
the somnolent raccoon by removing, under the influence of the drug, an
internal growth, which was considered the probable cause of his illness.
A surgeon was called in, the growth was found and removed, and the
raccoon, to everybody's surprise, continued to slumber peacefully on his
straw for five hours afterwards. At the end of that time he awoke, and
stretched himself as if nothing had happened; and though he was, of
course, very weak from loss of blood, he immediately displayed a
most royal hunger. He ate up all the maize that was offered him
for breakfast, and proceeded to manifest a desire for more by most
unequivocal symptoms.

Sebastian was overjoyed. He now felt sure he had discovered a drug
which would supersede chloroform--a drug more lasting in its immediate
effects, and yet far less harmful in its ultimate results on the balance