On the other hand there is not any foundation for supposing that in a globe which has received, or which possesses a certain degree of heat, there might be some parts of it much colder than others. We are sufficiently acquainted with the progress of heat and the phenomena of its communication, to be convinced that it is every where distributed alike, since by placing a cold body on one that is hot, the latter will communicate to the other sufficient heat to render heat of the same degree of temperature in a short time. It must not, therefore, be supposed that towards the poles there are strata of colder matters less permeable to the heat than in other climates, for of whatever nature they may be supposed to be, experience has demonstrated that in a very short time they would become as hot as the rest. It is evident that great cold in the north does not proceed from these pretended obstacles which might oppose themselves to the issue of heat, nor from the slight difference which that of the diameters of the terrestrial spheroid must produce; but it appears to me, after much reflection upon it, that we ought to attribute the equality of the summers, and the great inequality of the winters to a much more simple cause, but which, notwithstanding, has escaped the notice of all naturalists. It is certain that as the native heat of the earth is much greater than that which comes to it from the sun, the summers ought to appear nearly equal every where, because this same heat from the sun makes only a small augmentation to the stock of real heat which the earth possesses; and consequently if this heat issuing from the sun, be only 1/[T.N.] of the native heat of the globe, the greater or less stay of it on the horizon, its greater or less obliquity on the climate, and even its total absence, would only produce one-fiftieth difference on the temperature of the climate, and hence the summers must appear, and are, in fact, nearly equal in all the climates of the earth. But what makes the winters so very unequal is the emanations of this internal heat of the globe being in a great measure suppressed as soon as the cold and frost bind and consolidate the surface of the earth and waters. [T.N.: denominator missing from printed version.]