METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 143 
Our coldeft winds, as well as the moft violent, are the 
north-weft. The fouth and fouth-weft winds are the hot 
teft, though the fenfations of heat to which we are expof- 
ed, do not correfpond to the different degrees marked by 
the thermometer, as they depend much upon a current of 
air with which we are generally favoured about the hotteft 
time of the day, and copious {weating. I do not recolle& 
ever to have feen the thermometer here at more than gs, 
though Dr, Franklin mentions that in June 1750, it flood 
at 100 in the fhade at Philadelphia, when he obferves, 
“ T expected that the natural heat of the body, 96, added 
“‘ to the heat of the air, 100, fhould jointly have created 
“ or produced a much greater degree of heat in the body; 
< but the fact was, that my body never grew fo hot as the 
*¢ air that furrounded it, or the inanimate bodies immerf{f- 
© ed in the fame. For I remember well, that the defk, 
“ when I laid my arm upon it, a chair when I fat down 
“in it, all felt exceeding warm to me, as if they had been 
“ warmed before the fire. And I fuppofe a dead body 
“ would have acquired the temperature of the air, though 
“a living one, by continual {weating, and by the eva- 
* poration of that {weat was kept cold.” I have heen 
the more particular in tranfcribing this paflage from 
the works of this philofopher, as it certainly fhews to 
whom the merit of certain late difcoveries, which have 
made fo much noife in the philofophical world, moft juftly 
belongs; I mean, that power which the human as well 
as all animate bodies have, of counteracting the heat of 
an atmofphere in which they are placed. For what do all 
the experiments upon heated rooms evince, farther than 
had before been publifhed by the doctor? It is thus that 
Franklin fetting in his chair, like Newton reafoning upon 
the figure of the earth, could thew what muft coft others 
infinite labour and fatigue. But, though the effect was 
obferved and attributed to evaporation, yet I do not re- 
member that it is any where fhewn in what manner eva- 
U2 poration 
