VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL LIFE. 



95 



exercised, they may be removed to any distance whatever without the 

 smallest inconvenience. 



i*lants, again, are capable of existing in very high degrees of heat. M, 

 Sonnerat found the vitex Agnus castus^ and two species of aspalathus, on 

 the banks of a thermal rivulet in the island of Lucon, the heat of which 

 raised the themometer to 174*^ of Fahrenheit, and so near the water that 

 its roots swept into it. Around the borders of a volcano in the isle of 

 Tanna, whei\e the thermometer stood at 210°, Mr. Forster found a variety 

 of flowers flourishing in the highest state of perfection ; and confervas, and 

 other water-plants, are by no means iinfrequently traced in the boiling 

 springs of Italy, raising the thermometer to 21S° or the boiling point. 



Animals are cap^WA of onduriug a heat quite as extreme. Air has often 

 been breath©^^ l>y the human species with impunity at 264°. Tillet men- 

 tions its having been respired at 300° ; the Royal Academy asserts at 

 307°, or 130<* Reaumur, in an oven, for the space of ten minutes ;* and 

 Morantin gives a case at 325° Fahr., and that for a space of five minutes. 

 Even in the denser medium of water, animals of various kinds, and espe- 

 cially fishes, have been occasionally traced alive and in health in very high 

 temperatures. Thus Dr. Clarke asserts, that in one of the tepid springs of 

 Bonarbashy, situated near the Scamander, or Mender as it is now called, 

 notwithstanding the thermometer was raised to 62° Fahr., fishes were seen 

 sporting in the reservoir.! 



So in the thermal springs of Bahiain Brazil many small fishes are seen 

 swimming in a rivulet that raises the thermometer to 88°, the temperature 

 (^the air being only Sonnerat, however, found fishes existing in a 



hot spring at the Manillas at 158° Fahr. ;| and M. Humboldt and M. 

 Bonpland, in travelling through the province of Quito in South America, 

 perceived other fishes thrown up alive, and apparently in health, from the 

 bottom of a volcano, in the course of its explosions, along with water and 

 heated vapour that raised the thermometer to 210°, being only two de- 

 grees short of the boiling point. § 



In reality, without wandering from our own country, we may at times 

 meet with a variety of other phasnomena perfectly consonant in their 

 nature, and altogether as extraordinary, if we only attend to them as they 

 rise before us. Thus the eggs of the musca vomitoria^ our common 

 flesh-fly, or blow-fly, are often deposited in the heat of summer upon pu- 

 trescent meat, and broiled with such meat over a gridiron in the form of 

 steaks, in a heat not merely of 212°, but of three or four times 212° ; and 

 yet, instead of being hereby destroyed, we sometimes find them quickened 

 by this very exposure into their larve or grub state. And although I am 

 ready to allow that, in the simple form of seeds or eggs, plants or animals 

 may be expected to sustain a far higher degree of heat or cold with impu- 

 nity, than in their subsequent and more perfect state ; yet it cannot appear 

 more extraordinary that in such perfect state they should be able to resist 

 a heat of 210° or 212°, than that in the state of seeds or eggs they should 

 be able to exist in, and to derive benefit from, a heat three or four times 

 as excessive. 



In the vegetable world we meet with other peculiarities quite as singu- 

 lar, and which gives them an approach to the mineral kingdom : we have 



* Hist, de I'Acad. Royale des Sciences, 1764, p. 186. h. 16. 



1 Travels, part II. Greece, Egypt, aud the Holy Land, p. 111. 4to. ed. 



X He graduates by Reaumur's thermometer, and calculates the heat upon this at 690, 



f Rtcueil d'Obscrvations de Zoologie et d'Aisatomie comparee. 



