68 ANIMALCULA OF INFUSIONS. I. 



Society. — All the liquors, not excepting brandy, 

 froze within their houfes, and the beds in their 

 apartments were covered with a coating of ice 

 three inches thick, — though the walls of the 

 dwellings, where they had buried themfelves, were 

 ftone, and two feet thick, — the w^indows very 

 fmall, and clofed with ftrong boards mod part 

 of the day, — and they had great fires continually 

 burning. The Dutch fuifered equal cold in 

 Nova Zembla ; where the rigour of the weather 

 was fuch, that, in a clofe hut, and with a con- 

 ftant fire, it was with great difficulty they could 

 keep their feet from freezing. Their cloaths 

 were always covered with ice ; and their wine, 

 though very ftrong, was dealt out in lumps of 

 ice (i). 



The 



( I ) Here the author's dedudions are from erroneous 

 experiments made by others ; becaufe cold fo very inteufe 

 has never been witnefTed by modern philofophers. It is 

 not impoffible, indeed, that there are countries where it is 

 really as great, but they are yet unexplored. 



It was long believed, that no natural degree of cold ex- 

 ifted which would congeal mercury. It was artificially 

 frozen, and the thermometer fell feveral hundred degrees 

 below the freezing point. Therefore, when travellers in 

 the northern regions faw it ftand at — loo" or 200°, they 

 concluded that to be the real degree of cold : but the 

 mercury in the thermometer was already frozen, and ra- 

 pidly contracfling into lefs bulk. The freezing point of mer- 

 cury, it is now afcertained, is under— 40*^ : but if the cold 



exceeds 



i 



