His legs were convulsed and his head from time to time started
involuntarily, but he never showed the least desire to raise it from the
ground. He breathed hard and emitted foam from his mouth. The startings, or
_subsultus tendinum_, now became gradually weaker and weaker; his
hinder parts were fixed in death, and in a minute or two more his head and
fore-legs ceased to stir.

Nothing now remained to show that life was still within him except that his
heart faintly beat and fluttered at intervals. In five and twenty minutes
from the time of his being wounded he was quite dead. His flesh was very
sweet and savoury at dinner.

On taking a retrospective view of the two different kinds of poisoned
arrows, and the animals destroyed by them, it would appear that the
quantity of poison must be proportioned to the animal, and thus those
probably labour under an error who imagine that the smallest particle of it
introduced into the blood has almost instantaneous effects.

Make an estimate of the difference in size betwixt the fowl and the ox, and
then weigh a sufficient quantity of poison for a blow-pipe arrow, with
which the fowl was killed, and weigh also enough poison for three wild-hog
arrows, which destroyed the ox, and it will appear that the fowl received
much more poison in proportion than the ox. Hence the cause why the fowl
died in five minutes and the ox in five and twenty.

Indeed, were it the case that the smallest particle of it introduced into
the blood has almost instantaneous effects, the Indian would not find it
necessary to make the large arrow: that of the blow-pipe is much easier
made and requires less poison.