serts to be, for a few hours, "so hot as to seem burning." The learned M. Senebier of Geneva, examining into this fact, discovered that the heat began when the sheath was about to open, and the cylindrical body within just peeping forth; and that it was perceptible from about three or four o'clock in the afternoon till eleven or twelve at night. Its greatest degree was seven of Reaumur's scale above the heat of the air, which at the time of his observation was about fourteen or fifteen of that thermometer. Such is the account with which I have been favoured by Dr. Bostock of Liverpool, from a letter of M. Senebier[1], dated Nov. 28. 1796, to M. De la Rive. I have not hitherto been successful in observing the phænomenon in question, which however is well worthy of attention, and may probably not be confined to this species of Arum.
- ↑ It is now published in his Physiologie Végétale, v. 3. 314, where nevertheless this ingenious philosopher has declared his opinion to be rather against the existence of a spontaneous heat in vegetables, and he explains even the above striking phænomenon upon chemical principles, which seem to me very inadequate.
