201 
further decrease; but the powers of life were expended by this exertion, 
and then the parts froze like any other dead animal matter.” 
CONCLUSION. 
“ From these experiments it appears, that a fresh egg has the power of 
resisting heat, cold, and putrefaction, in a degree equal to many animals, 
and it is more than probable, continues John Hunter, that this power arises 
from the same principle in both.” 
“ Snakes and fishes,” continues the same ingenious experimentalist, “ after 
being frozen, having still retained so much of life, as when thawed * to resume 
their vital action, is a fact so well attested, that we are bound to believe it.” 
In like manner seeds retain their vital principle, although subjected to 
vast changes of temperature. (i Great degrees of heat,” says the illustrious 
Dr. Smith, f “ short of boiling, do not impair the vegetative power of seeds, 
nor do we know any degree of cold that has such an effect.” Hence it is, 
“ that if seeds be not exposed to too great an artificial heat, so as completely 
to scorch them,” according to the experience of a very expert botanist, Mr. 
Salisbury, “ they cannot be kept in too warm a situation.” 
Upon this principle it was, that when the smut + pervaded in a dreadful 
* In this way eels are said to be transported frozen from Moscow to Petersburgh, and re-animated 
by the gradual application of heat. 
f Vide “An Introduction to Physiological and Systematic Botany,” p. gg. 
J This disease is produced by an insect, according to the observations of Mr. Somerville, in the 
second volume of Communications to the Board of Agriculture, where he relates, that some years 
ago he collected a quantity of smutted ears from one field of wheat, in which they were very nume¬ 
rous, and a number of healthy well-filled ears from another held, in which there was no smut. The 
grains were rubbed out of both, intimately mixed, and kept in a box for two months, at the end of 
which they were rubbed between the hands in such a manner as to break the whole of the smut 
ball. The parcel was then divided into two equal parts, one of which was three or four times 
washed with pure water, and well rubbed between the hands at each washing, and afterwards sown 
in a drill in his garden; the other half was sown in another drill without any washing or preparation 
whatever; the soil, and every other circumstance, was equal. Both parcels vegetated at the same 
time, and for about two months thereafter there was no visible difference in their appearance; about 
that period he, however, observed that many of the plants in the drill that had been sown without 
being washed, were of a darker colour than the others; these, when narrowly examined, were of a 
dirty green. The plants in the drill that had been washed were all of one colour, and seemingly 
healthy; as the season advanced, the difference in colour became more striking, and continued to 
increase till the grain was fairly out of the blade; about which time many of the dirty green ears 
bemm to exhibit symptons of decay. As soon as the ear was fairly shot out, the whole of those in 
the unwashed drill, that had the dirty green appearance before described, were found to contain 
nothing but smut; and these smutted ears were in the proportion of more than six to one of the 
healthy ones; while, on the contrary, the drill in which the washed grains had been sown, and 
3 E 
