NOW At ORGANUM. 317 



is no degree of heat in inanimate things perceptible to the human 

 touch ; but yet they differ in decree of cold, for wood and metal are 

 not equally cold. But this belongs to the Table of Decrees in Cold. 



2. As regards potential heat and preparation for flame, very many 

 inanimate substances are found to be very much disposed thereto, as 

 sulphur, naphtha, petroleum. 



3. Substances which were once hot, such as horse-dung, or lime, 

 or perhaps ashes, and soot, retain some latent remnants of their 

 former heat, And so certain distillations and separations of bodies 

 arc brought about by burying them in horse-dung, and heat is excited 

 in iime by sprinkling it with water, as has been already said. 



4. Among vegetables we do not find any plant, or part of a plant 

 (as gum or pith), which is hot to the human touch. But yet (as has 

 been said above) green herbs, when shut up together, gather heat ; and 

 some vegetables are found to be hot, and others cold to the internal 

 touch, as to the palate, or the stomach, or even, after a little time, to 

 the external parts, as in the case of plasters and ointments. 



5. In the parts of animals, after death or separation, we find nothing 

 hot to the touch. For horse-dung itself does not retain heat, unless 

 it be confined and buried. But yet all dung seems to have a potential 

 heat, as appears in the fertilizing of land. And in like manner the 

 corpses of animals have some such latent and potential heat, so that 

 in grave-yards where burials take place daily, the earth contracts a 

 kind of hidden heat, which consumes any corpses recently interred 

 far more quickly than pure earth. And it is said that among the 

 Orientals a certain thin and soft web has been discovered, prepared 

 from the plumage of birds, which, by an innate power, dissolves and 

 liquefies butter when lightly wrapped up in it. 



6. Fertilizing substances, such as dung of all kinds, chalk, sea-sand, 

 salt, and the like, have some disposition to heat. 



7. All putrefaction has in it certain elements of slight heat, though 

 not sufficient to be perceptible to the touch. For not even those 

 substances which by putrefaction turn to animalcuhe, such as flesh, or 

 cheese, are perceptibly hot ; nor is rotten wood, which shines at niglit, 

 found to be hot to the touch. But the heat of putrid matter sometimes 

 betrays itself by foul and strong smells. 



8. And so the first degree of heat, among those substaaices which 

 feel hot to the touch, seems to be the heat of animals ; and this has 

 great latitude in its degrees, for the lowest degree (as in insects) is 

 scarcely felt by the touch ; but the highest scarcely reaches to the 

 degree of heat possessed by the sun s rays in the warmest regions and 

 seasons, nor is it too severe to be born by the hand. And yet they 

 relate of Constantius, and some others of a very dry constitution and 

 habit of body, that when attacked by very acute fever, they became so 

 hot as to seem almost to burn a hand placed on them. 



9. Animals increase in heat by motion and exercise, by wine and 

 feasting, by desire, by raging fevers, and by pain. 



10. Animals, when attacked by intermittent fevers, are seized at 

 first with cold and shivering, but after a while grow extremely hot ; 



