At these high temperatures every piece of metal about the body of the experimenters became intolerably hot; small quantities of water placed in metallic vessels quickly boiled. Though the air of this room, which at one period indicated a heat of 264 degrees, could be breathed with impunity, yet of course the finger could not be put into the boiling water, which indicated only a heat of 212 degrees; nor could it bear the touch of quicksilver heated only to 120 degrees, nor scarcely that of spirits of wine at 110 degrees. But in a physiological view, the most curious and important point to be noticed is, that while the body was thus exposed to a temperature of 264 degrees, the heat of the body itself never rose above 101 degrees, or at most 102 degrees. In one experiment, while the heat of the room was 202 degrees, the heat of the body was only 99½ degrees; its natural temperature in a state of health being 98 degrees.” A similar power of withstanding extreme degrees of temperature is one of the peculiar properties of every thing possessing life. It is well known that an egg containing the living principle possesses the power of self-preservation for several weeks, although exposed to a degree of heat which would occasion the putrifaction of dead animal matter. During the period of incubation (hatching) the egg is kept at a heat of 103 degrees, the hen’s egg for three, that of the duck for four weeks; yet when the chick is hatched, the entire yolk is found perfectly sweet, and that part of the white which has not been expended in the nourishment of the young bird is also quite fresh. It is found that if the living principle be destroyed, as it may be instantaneously, by passing the electric fluid through the egg, it becomes putrid in the same time as other dead animal matter. The power of the egg in resisting cold is proved to be equally great by several curious experiments of Hunter, the celebrated physiologist, which were so managed as to show at the same time both the power of the vital principle in resisting the physical agent, and the influence of the physical agent in diminishing the energy of the vital principle. Thus he exposed an egg to the temperature of 17 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, he found that it took about half an hour to freeze it. When thawed, and again exposed to a cold atmosphere, it was frozen in one half the time, and when only at the temperature of 25 degrees. He then put a fresh egg, and one that had previously been frozen and again thawed, into a cold mixture at 15 degrees: the dead egg was frozen twenty-five minutes sooner than the fresh one. It is obvious that in the one case the undiminished vitality of the fresh egg enabled it to resist the low temperature for so long a period; in the other case the diminished or destroyed vitality of the frozen egg occasioned it speedily to yield to the influence of the physical agent.