the par 



.. V - 



DIVISIONS OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. XIX 





the particles of a body when dead, can be resisted by the 

 same body when it is endowed with life. Animals, when alive, 

 have the power of resisting extremes of heat, which acting 

 upon the dead body would dry up and dissipate its fluid parts, 

 nay, reduce it to a cinder. Many persons have subjected 

 themselves to a temperature of the air far exceeding that of 

 boiling water, and yet the heat of the body itself has very 

 little exceeded that of its natural state. A few years ago 

 a French mountebank exhibited, night after night, to thou- 

 sands of spectators, in London, his power of entering a heat- 

 ed oven, in which he remained while a piece of flesh was 

 roasted. A coal-mine in Scotland, in the valley of the Forth, 

 having taken fire, burned for years, and long resisted all the 

 attempts to extinguish it. Miners frequently worked in the 

 vicinity of this burning mine, when the heat of the air was 

 nearly equal to that of boiling water. They pursued their 

 labour in this torrid atmosphere, without seeming injury to 

 their health, or other inconvenience than continued perspira- 

 tion : and many more examples could be given of the power 

 of the animal frame to resist extreme heat, while the tempe- 

 rature of the blood and other fluids within the body remained 

 without sensible change. 



As the vital powers of the animal enable the body to resist 

 intense heat, so they enable it to resist excessive cold. At 

 degrees of temperature at which all the fluids of the dead 

 body would be frozen, the living body retains its natural 

 temperature, and performs its wonted functions. Even in 

 these latitudes of ours, there every year occur periods of 

 cold, when the temperature of the external air is below that 

 at which water congeals, and at which all the fluids of the 

 body would freeze were they separated from it. In countries 

 of the higher latitudes, the mean temperature of the year falls 

 below the melting point of ice, and yet such countries are in- 

 habited by numerous animals. The recent voyages of intrepid 

 travellers, the Parrys, the Franklins, the Rosses, and others, 

 have shewn that, at a degree of cold below that at which 





