1. There is no known solid or tangible body which is by its own nature originally warm; for neither stone, metal, sulphur, fossils, wood, water, nor dead animal carcasses are found warm. The warm springs in baths appear to be heated accidentally, by flame, subterraneous fire (such as is thrown up by Etna and many other mountains), or by the contact of certain bodies, as heat is exhibited in the dissolution of iron and tin. The degree of heat, therefore, in inanimate objects is not sensible to our touch; but they differ in their degrees of cold, for wood and metal are not equally cold.[94] This, however, belongs to the Table of Degrees of Cold. 2. But with regard to potential heat and predisposition to flame, we find many inanimate substances wonderfully adapted to it, as sulphur, naphtha, and saltpetre. 3. Bodies which have previously acquired heat, as horse dung from the animal, or lime, and perhaps ashes and soot from fire, retain some latent portion of it. Hence distillations and separations of substances are effected by burying them in horse dung, and heat is excited in lime by sprinkling it with water (as has been before observed). 4. In the vegetable world we know of no plant, nor part of any plant (as the exudations or pith) that is warm to man’s touch. Yet (as we have before observed) green weeds grow warm when confined, and some vegetables are warm and others cold to our internal touch, _i.e._, the palate and stomach, or even after a while to our external skin (as is shown in plasters and ointments). 5. We know of nothing in the various parts of animals, when dead or detached from the rest, that is warm to the touch; for horse dung itself does not retain its heat, unless it be confined and buried. All dung, however, appears to possess a potential heat, as in manuring fields; so also dead bodies are endued with this latent and potential heat to such a degree, that in cemeteries where people are interred daily the earth acquires a secret heat, which consumes any recently deposited body much sooner than pure earth; and they tell you that the people of the East are acquainted with a fine soft cloth, made of the down of birds, which can melt butter wrapped gently up in it by its own warmth. 6. Manures, such as every kind of dung, chalk, sea-sand, salt and the like, have some disposition toward heat. 7. All putrefaction exhibits some slight degree of heat, though not enough to be perceptible by the touch; for neither the substances which by putrefaction are converted into animalculæ,[95] as flesh and cheese, nor rotten wood which shines in the dark, are warm to the touch. The heat, however, of putrid substances displays itself occasionally in a disgusting and strong scent.