CHAP. V. 
DISENGAGEMENT OF CALORIC. 
279 
Species. 
Jjuration 
of the 
£iXperiment< 
Oxygen destroyed. 
By the flowers entire. 
By the usual organs 
only. 
Cheiranthus incanus 
24 hours. 
1 1 '5 times their vol. 
18 times their vol. 
Tropaeolum majus 
24 
8-5 
16-3 
Cucurbita maxima, 
male 
10 
7-6 
160 
Hypericum calycinum 
24 
7-5 
8-5 
Hibiscus speciosus 
12 
5-4 
6-3 
Cobaea scandens 
24 
6-5 
7-5 
And it is here to be noticed, that those whose sexual ap- 
paratus destroyed the most oxygen have the greatest quantity 
of disk, and vice versa; with the exception of Cobaea scandens, 
in which the disk is very firm and persistent, and probably, 
therefore, acts very slowly. 
When the cup-shaped disk of the male flowers of the 
gourd was separated from the anthers, the latter only con- 
sumed 11*7 times their volume of oxygen in the same space of 
time which was sufficient for the destruction of sixteen times 
their volume when the disk remained. The spathe of Arum 
maculatum consumed, in twenty-four hours, five times its 
volume of oxygen ; the termination of the spadix thirty times ; 
the sexual apparatus 132 times, in the same space of time. 
An entire Arum dracunculus, in twenty-four hours, de- 
stroyed thirteen times its volume of oxygen ; without its spathe 
fifty-seven times; cut into four pieces, its spathe destroyed 
half its volume of oxygen ; the terminal appendix twenty-six 
times; the male organs 135 times; the female organs ten times. 
The same ingenious observer also ascertained that double 
flowers, that is to say those whose petals replace sexual 
organs, vitiate the air much less than single flowers, in which 
the sexual organs are perfect. 
Is it not then, concludes Dunal, probable that the conse- 
quence of all these phenomena is the elaboration of a matter 
destined to the nutriment of the sexual organs? since the 
production of heat and the destruction of oxygen are in direct 
relation to the abundance of glandular surface, and since these 
phenomena arrive at their maximum of intensity at the exact 
period when the anthers are most developed, and the sexual 
organs in the greatest state of activity. 
T 4 
