in Chemistry, a term generally applied to the distillation of quicksilver from cinnabar.

in Physiology, the recalling to life of animals apparently dead. There are many kinds of insects which may be revivified, after all the powers of animation have been suspended for a considerable time. Common flies, small beetles, spiders, moths, bugs, &c., after being drowned in spirit of wine, and continuing apparently dead for upwards of fifteen minutes, have been restored to life merely by being thrown amongst wood-ashes slightly warm.

Whilst Dr Franklin was in France, he received a quantity of Madeira wine from America, which had been bottled in Virginia. He found a few dead flies in some of the bottles, which he exposed to the sun in the month of July; and in less than three hours these seemingly dead animals recovered life which had been so long suspended. At first they appeared as if convulsed; they then raised themselves on their legs, washed their eyes with their fore feet, dressed their wings with those behind, and in a short time began to fly about.

But the most remarkable instance of revivification we have heard of is the following. In the warmer parts of France there is an insect very pernicious to the rye, apparently beginning its operations at the foot of the plant, and gradually proceeding towards the ear. If the plant be thoroughly dried whilst the insect is in the root or stem, the animal is irrecoverably killed; but after it has reached the grain, the case is very different. There have been instances of these insects being brought to life in fifteen minutes, by a little warm water, after the grains in which they were lodged had been kept dry for thirty years.

What is the metaphysician to think of these phenomena, or what conclusion is he to draw from them respecting the mind? If he be a sober man he will draw no conclusion, and for this reason, that he knows nothing of the sentient principle of insects, or of any animal but man. He is conscious that it is the same individual being that, in himself, thinks, and wills, and feels; he knows that part of his thought is not in one place, and part of it in another; and therefore he concludes that this thinking being is not matter, whilst experience teaches him that it quits the material system when that becomes unfit to discharge its functions, and cannot be recalled. Experience teaches him, on the other hand, that the sentient principle of these insects does not quit the system when unfit for its functions; and hence he ought to infer, that the minds of men and of insects are very different, and that the bond which unites the material and immaterial parts of an insect is certainly different from that which unites the mind and body of man. This is the only inference which can be fairly drawn from these phenomena.