Nor is it a heat-producing fluid. On the contrary, it appears, in all cases, to diminish the efficiency of the heat-producing process. Most of us who live here in the North, and who are occasionally subjected to extreme cold for hours at a time, know this by personal experience; and all the Arctic voyagers attest it. Brandy is destruction when men have to face a temperature of sixty below zero; they want lamp-oil then, and the rich blubber of the whale and walrus. Dr. Rae, who made two or three pedestrian tours of the polar regions, and whose powers of endurance were put to as severe a test as man's ever were, is clear and emphatic upon this point. Brandy, he says, stimulates but for a few minutes, and greatly lessens a man's power to endure cold and fatigue. Occasionally we have in New York a cool breeze from the North which reduces the temperature below zero,--to the sore discomfort of omnibus-drivers and car-drivers, who have to face it on their way up town. On a certain Monday night, two or three winters ago, twenty-three drivers on one line were disabled by the cold, many of whom had to be lifted from the cars and carried in. It is a fact familiar to persons in this business, that men who drink freely are more likely to be benumbed and overcome by the cold than those who abstain. It seems strange to us, when we first hear it, that a meagre teetotaller should be safer on such a night than a bluff, red-faced imbiber of beer and whiskey, who takes something at each end of the line to keep himself warm. It nevertheless appears to be true. A traveller relates, that, when Russian troops are about to start upon a march in a very cold region, no grog is allowed to be served to them; and when the men are drawn up, ready to move, the corporals smell the breath of every man, and send back to quarters all who have been drinking. The reason is, that men who start under the influence of liquor are the first to succumb to the cold, and the likeliest to be frost-bitten. It is the uniform experience of the hunters and trappers in the northern provinces of North America, and of the Rocky Mountains, that alcohol diminishes their power to resist cold. A whole magazine could be filled with testimony on this point.