336 
PHYSIOLOGY. 
BOOK II. 
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 wTose 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. 
