Buffon's Natural History. Volume 10 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &cBuffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
History
Buffon's Natural History. Volume 10 (of 10): Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c
Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de
Natural history
After all there appear to be two kinds of heat, the one luminous, of
which the sun is the focus; the other obscure, of which the grand
reservoir is the terrestrial globe. Our body, as making part of the
globe, participates of this obscure heat; and it is for this reason,
that it is still obscure to us, because we do not perceive it by any
one of our senses. It is with respect to this heat of the globe, as
with its motion, we are subject to and participate thereof without
feeling or doubting of it: from hence it happened that physicians at
first carried all their views and enquiries on the heat of the sun,
without suspecting that it makes but a very small part of what we
really feel; but having made instruments to discover the difference of
the immediate heat of the rays of the sun, they with astonishment found
that the heat of them was sixty-six times stronger in summer than in
winter, notwithstanding the strongest heat of our summer differs only
a seventh from the strongest cold of our winter; from whence they have
concluded, that, independent of the heat we receive from the sun, there
emanates another, even from this terrestrial globe, which is much more
considerable; insomuch, that it is at present demonstrable, that this
heat, which escapes from the bowels of the earth, is in our climate at
least twenty-nine times in summer, and four hundred times in winter,
stronger than the heat which comes to us from the sun.
This strong heat which resides in the interior part of the globe, and
which, without ceasing to emanate externally, must, like an element,
enter into the combination of all the other elements. If the sun is
the parent of Nature, the heat of the earth must be the mother; they
both unite to produce, support, and animate organized beings, and to
assimilate and compose inanimate substances. This internal heat of the
globe, which tends always from the centre to the circumference, is, in
my opinion, a great agent in nature. We can scarcely doubt but it is
the principal influence on the perpendicularity of the trunks of trees,
on the phenomena of electricity, on the effects of magnetism, &c. But
as I do not pretend to make a physical treatise here, I shall confine
myself to the effects of this heat on the other elements. It is alone
sufficient to maintain the rarefaction of the air to the degree that
we breathe in: it is more than sufficient to keep water in its state
of fluidity, for we have lowered the thermometers to the depth of 120
fathoms, and have found the temperature of the water was there nearly
the same as at the like depth in the earth, namely, ten degrees two
thirds. We must not, therefore, be surprized, especially as salt acts
as a prevention, that the sea in general does not freeze, that fresh
water freezes but to a certain thickness, and that the water at bottom
always remains liquid, even in the most intense frosts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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