Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/55

 *[Footnote: Reaumur, on doit être disposé à admettre que la revivification n'a dans l'animal d'autre condition que l'intégrité de composition et de connexions organiques." In the same way, in the vegetable kingdom, the sporules of cryptogamia, which Kunth compares to the propagation of certain phænogamous plants by buds (bulbillæ), retain their germinating power in the highest temperatures. According to the most recent experiments of Payen, the sporules of a minute fungus (Oïdium aurantiacum), which covers the crumb of bread with a reddish feathery coating, do not lose their power of germination by being exposed for half an hour in closed tubes to a temperature of from 67° to 78° Reaumur (182°.75 to 207°.5 Fah.), before being strewed on fresh perfectly unspoilt dough. May not the newly discovered monad (Monas prodigiosa), which causes blood-like spots on mealy substances, have been mingled with this fungus?

Ehrenberg, in his great work on Infusoria (S.492-496), has given the most complete history of all the investigations which have taken place on what is called the revivification of rotiferæ. He believes that, in spite of all the means of desiccation employed, the organization-fluid still remains in the apparently dead animal. He contests the hypothesis of "latent life;" death, he says, is not "life latent, but the want of life."

We have evidence of the diminution, if not of the entire disappearance or suspension of organic functions, in the hybernation or winter sleep both of warm and cold-blooded animals, in the dormice, marmots, sand martins (Hirundo riparia) according to Cuvier (Règne animal, 1829, T. i. p.]*