Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/669

Rh down into the larger space and held there. This larger space is the narcotizing receptacle or chamber.

At the back of the apparatus is a recess in which are placed the narcotizing fluid and the pump for forcing it into the cages containing the animals. The narcotic fluid is contained in a large, strong Wolff's bottle filled loosely with Verity's fuel. The forcing-pump is worked by a piston from the outside, and consists of a cylinder capable of containing one eighth of a cubic foot of air or gas. From the farther end of the cylinder are two tubes, one of which runs into the narcotizing chamber at the lower part, the other to the long tube in the Wolff's bottle below the surface of the narcotic fluid within the bottle. From the short or escape tube from the bottle is a continuous tube, terminating over the cage containing the animal. By an extra tap coal-gas can, if desired, be let into this chamber.

The animal to be slept into death is placed, resting on a little straw or hay, in a cage, which is then dropped into the large receptacle, the lid of which is at once closed. The handle of the piston is then moved up and down at a regular and quiet pace. As the piston is drawn out, the cylinder of the pump is filled with air from the large receptacle, and, as the piston is pushed back, it forces the air with which the cylinder has been filled through the narcotic fluid, a portion of which it raises into vapor and forces into the cage. Eight strokes of the piston charge one cubic foot of air with the narcotic vapor to saturation, and, as there are only nine cubic feet in all to charge, a couple of minutes are sufficient to charge throughout.

The animals in this apparatus pass quickly into sleep, and die not quite so quickly, but quite as painlessly, as in the larger structure.

This smaller apparatus will be so complete when it is finished that it may be wheeled from the station to a private house, if that be wanted; or it may be used in the streets for giving painless death to wounded animals. It may also, in future, be constructed at so comparatively trifling a cost that I see no reason why every town in the country may not be in possession of one, and every small animal be spirited away in sleep. Compared with other modes of extinguishing animal life—such as hanging, drowning, poisoning by prussic acid, shooting, stunning—the lethal method stands far ahead on every ground of practical readiness, certainty, humanity.

By means of carbonic oxide, sheep can be put to sleep with the greatest rapidity before they are slaughtered. I have submitted forty sheep in this way to painless death, and found that no bad effect whatever is produced in the flesh unfitting it for food. The objection to retention of blood, so strongly felt by the Jewish people, does not obtain, the animals in the narcotic state yielding up blood just as freely as in the ordinary way, when no narcotic is used. The same process is equally applicable to swine, calves, and fowls. To oxen I do not as yet see its immediate application.