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128 TRICHOLOGLA MAMMALIUM; 
Goldsmith is of opinion, that the reason why the hair of the cat kind of animals [Fels] 
is more electric, is because it is sleek and glossy.* (Nat. Hist of Man., &c., v. °, p 7.) 
If you rub the back of a person, standing upon a stool with glass feet, with the skin of 
an animal tanned with the fur on, for a few minutes, he may heht a 
finger. 
oas-burner with his 
too) 
PILE AS A CONDUCTOR OR NON-CONDUCTOR OF CaLoric.—Pile is a non-conducter of caloric. 
According to the experiments of Count Rumford, it depends upon the degree of ooseness 
or teghtness with which the hairy or woolly filaments are compacted; hence, it would seem 
that those wools which are capable of being felted or fulled into the least space, will be 
the most effectual in retaining the animal heat. Buta late learned writer upon this subject 
considers the atmosphere, which is confined within the interstices, equally as good a non- 
conductor as the pile. 
OF THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE AND SEASONS UPON Piie.—Nature, like a kind mother, 
adapts the clothing of wild animals to the climates and to seasons to which they originally 
belong. In Guinea, dogs and sheep are almost naked, while the Siberian Dog and Ice- 
land Sheepare provided with warm clothing. Swine, in high latitudes, have bristles only, 
or bristles and hair of a similar texture; but the same species of animal, in colder regions, 
has added to their coats a vest of fine frizzled wool. The present race of elephants, 
inhabiting warm latitudes, has scarcely any hair, and no wo0/—a few hairs on the lower 
jaw, the ear and tail, being all of which they can boast; whereas, the Mammoth, found 
envelope.| in ice on the banks of the river Lena, in Russia, had lone hairs and warm wool. 
In like manner (as it 1s said) some animals taken from one climate to another, exchange 
their coats for one more suited to their change of situation. In regard to Sheep, we feel 
ourselves warranted in announcing the following rules, viz: Ist, thata pure woolly Sheep 
cannot become a hairy Sheep by change of climate, nor can a pure hairy Sheep become a 
woolly one by such change; 2d, a hybrid (which is already partly hairy and partly woolly) 
may partially change its coat by the one kind of integument falling out and being replaced 
by the other kind; 3d, a filament of hair cannot be changed into a strand of wool, nor a 
strand of wool be transformed into a filament of hair, by any change of climate. 
The variation of seasons affects the natural clothing of m7/d as well as the domesticated 
animals ‘The trapper, suffering from the extreme cold of an uncommonly severe winter, 
consoles himself with the reflection that his stock of furs will be valuable in the same pro- 
portion. And the experienced furrier, from the examination of his pelts, is able to judge 
of the severity of the weather during which they were produced. 
Leuwenhoeck tells of a man whose hair changed with the seasons, like one of the lower 
animals,t but we have never witnessed any such phenomenon. 
OF THE EFFECTS OF THE SKIN upon Prie.—Mr. Livingston (in his Essay upon Sheep) 
* Ts it more electric than other animals with hair and wool? 
7 Collect. Philos., &c., &e., 1681. 
