On the respiration of birds

• Published in: Abstracts of the Papers Printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1833
• Subjects: Carbonic acid
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspl.1815.0372; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspl.1815.0372

The inquiries of the authors on human respiration, and on that of the guinea pig, and of which they communicated the details to the Royal Society in former papers, are here extended to the respiration of birds. Pigeons were the subjects of these experiments, and the same apparatus was employed as the one used for the guinea pig, described in the Philosophical Transactions for 1809. The object of the first experiment was to ascertain the changes which take place in atmospheric air when breathed by a bird in the most natural manner. For this purpose a pigeon was placed in a glass vessel containing 62 cubic inches of air, and commuuicating with two gasometers, one of which supplied from time to time fresh quantities of air, and the other received portions which become vitiated by respiration. The experiment lasted 69 minutes, and was produc­tive of no injury to the bird excepting a slight appearance of uneasiness whenever the supply of air was not sufficiently rapid. On ex­amining the air at the end of the experiment, no alteration had taken place either in the total volume of air, or in the proportion of azotewhich it contained; the only perceptible change being the substitu­tion of a certain quantity of carbonic acid for an equal volume of oxygen gas, amounting to about half a cubic inch per minute, and being equivalent to the addition of 96 grains of carbon in 24 hours.