348 DR JOHN DAVY'S 



aqueous vapour filling the receiver, and of the disengagement of a little air from 

 the eggs, the cause of the combustion or luminous appearance. Not until the 

 last night was there a cessation of the phenomenon. On the following day, the 

 28th, the eggs, with a certain number of fresh eggs, were put under a hen: 

 owing to an accident, the hatching process was interrupted. After an incubation 

 extended to the 20th of June, one of the three eggs was found to contain a foetus ; 

 the other two, in an unknown maimer, had been taken from the nest. That in 

 this instance a very minute portion of oxygen might have remained in the egg 

 — a portion not exhausted by the air-pump — seems not improbable. Thus much 

 granted, there seems little difficulty in admitting the persistence of a feeble action 

 in the egg in question, and this a vital action, similar to that which, it may be in- 

 ferred, is in progress in the ordinary egg when in a fit state for hatching — a con- 

 dition limited as to time, and in the common fowl seldom exceeding thirty days. 

 If considerations of this kind render the results obtained from the vacuum 

 eggs inferentially questionable, they are not less applicable to the results of the 

 trials of the eggs kept in lime water and the ice-house. Under lime water access 

 of air only is excluded. The little air in the egg may suffice for sustaining a very 

 feeble action, sufficient for the preservation of life for a limited time. In an ice- 

 house, at a temperature of 32°, or lower, if not low enough to freeze the egg, 

 action may be diminished seemingly, but not be really arrested. The ova of the 

 salmon, it has recently been ascertained, are capable of being hatched after 

 having been kept in ice-water one hundred and twenty days, and thus conveyed 

 to Australia. Whether there can be life without action, or its equivalent change, 

 is a problem which I hardly venture to approach. In the seeds of certain vege- 

 tables, which, circumstances not favouring, remain without germinating months 

 and years, there seems to be during the period an arrest of vital force or action ; 

 and yet, may it not be more apparent than real ? When we reflect that each 

 kind of seed, like each kind of egg, has its term of retension of vitality — the 

 longest, in the instance of the seed, little exceeding thirty years — we may be 

 allowed to have our doubts on the subject. It is possible that during the whole 

 period, however long, there may be a very feeble action, though imperceptible, 

 sustaining life. It may be well to reflect on the coarseness of our measures of 

 time, and that great cosmic changes, which require hundreds and thousands of 

 years to become conspicuous, are produced by causes in continued operation, 

 which are absolutely inappreciable in their momentary effects. An instance of 

 this is afforded by the worn-foot of the bronze statue in St Peter's, so worn by 

 the kisses of devotees during hundreds of years. What we witness in certain 

 hibernating animals seems to favour our doubts. In the instance of the dormouse, 

 in the depth of winter, there are no distinct indications observable of life; its 

 temperature is about that of the air ; no arterial action is perceptible ; yet it 

 would appear that the heart's action, and the action of the secreting organs, is not 



