But the most decisive experiments against any supposed alteration in the capacities of bodies for containing heat are those lately tried by Count Rumford, and related in the Philosophical Transactions for 1798. His attention to this subject was engaged by observing the great degree of heat acquired by a brass gun during the time of boring it,[77] and still more by the intense heat (much greater than that of boiling water) of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer. From a consideration of these things he was naturally led to the following inquiries. “Whence comes the heat actually produced in this mechanical operation? Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by the borer from the solid mass of metal? If this were the case, then, according to the modern doctrine of caloric, the _capacity for heat_ of the parts of the metal so reduced to chips, ought not only to be changed, but the change undergone by them be sufficiently great to account for _all_ the heat produced. But no such change had taken place; for I found, that by taking equal quantities by weight of these chips, and of thin slips of the same block of metal, separated by means of a fine saw, and putting them at the same temperature, that of boiling water, and putting them into equal quantities of cold water (that is to say, at 59-1/2 of Fahrenheit) the portion of water into which the chips were put, was not, to all appearance, heated either less or more than the other portion in which the chips were put.” [77] Count Rumford was superintendant of boring the cannon in the workshops of the military hospital at Munich.