I have hitherto considered the temperature of the air all the year through, and the gross estimations of heat and cold which every one makes from his own sensation. If this matter be examined by means of thermometers, which in respect to the absolute degree of heat and cold are doubtless the most unerring evidences--if this be done, the result will be indeed most wonderful, since it will hence appear that the heat in very high latitudes, as at Petersburgh, for instance, is at particular times much greater than any that has been hitherto observed between the tropics; and that even at London, in the year 1746, there was the part of one day considerably hotter than what was at any time felt by a ship of Mr. Anson's squadron in running from hence to Cape Horn and back again, and passing twice under the sun; for in the summer of that year, the thermometer in London (being one of those graduated according to the method of Farenheit) stood once at 78°; and the greatest height at which a thermometer of the same kind stood in the foregoing ship I find to be 76°: this was at St. Catherine's, in the latter end of {171} December, when the sun was within about three degrees of the vertex. And as to Petersburgh, I find, by the acts of the academy established there, that in the year 1734, on the 20th and 25th of July, the thermometer rose to 98° in the shade, that is, it was twenty-two divisions higher than it was found to be at St. Catherine's; which is a degree of heat that, were it not authorised by the regularity and circumspection with which the observations seem to have been made, would appear altogether incredible.