There was no _subsultus tendinum_ or any visible alteration in its
breathing. During the tenth minute from the time it was wounded it stirred,
and that was all; and the minute after life's last spark went out. From the
time the poison began to operate you would have conjectured that sleep was
overpowering it, and you would have exclaimed: "Pressitque jacentem, dulcis
et alta quies, placidaeque simillima morti."

There are now two positive proofs of the effect of this fatal poison: viz.
the death of the dog and that of the sloth. But still these animals were
nothing remarkable for size, and the strength of the poison in large
animals might yet be doubted were it not for what follows.

A large well-fed ox, from nine hundred to a thousand pounds weight, was
tied to a stake by a rope sufficiently strong to allow him to move to and
fro. Having no large coucourite spikes at hand, it was judged necessary, on
account of his superior size, to put three wild-hog arrows into him: one
was sent into each thigh just above the hock in order to avoid wounding a
vital part, and the third was shot traversely into the extremity of the
nostril.

The poison seemed to take effect in four minutes. Conscious as though he
would fall, the ox set himself firmly on his legs and remained quite still
in the same place till about the fourteenth minute, when he smelled the
ground and appeared as if inclined to walk. He advanced a pace or two,
staggered and fell, and remained extended on his side, with his head on the
ground. His eye, a few minutes ago so bright and lively, now became fixed
and dim, and though you put your hand close to it, as if to give him a blow
there, he never closed his eyelid.