NOMOS. 125 



CHAP. III. 



SEARCH AFTER A CENTRAL LAW IN SOME OF THE 

 PHENOMENA OF NATURAL HEAT. 



IT is not easy to overrate the importance of heat in 

 the economy of inorganic nature. Without heat the 



skies would be without water, and without 



. , -. The import- 



water the glorious drapery of clouds would ance of heat 



vanish, and the brightness and lustre of nomyofna- 

 the morning would change into gloom 

 and darkness. Without heat the rivers would 

 become motionless glaciers, and the solid sea would 

 no longer palpitate in sympathy with the heavens. 

 Nay, the very air must freeze into adamantine 

 hardness under cold so terrible, and the solid earth 

 must shrink into smaller compass. Nor is this all. 

 On the contrary, there are many smaller but still 

 very important effects of heat which have yet to be 

 traced, and which will enable us to see that heat is 

 something more than an element of second-rate 

 importance in the law of nature. 



The amount of heat which the earth is continually 

 receiving from the sun is very great. According to 

 M. Pouillet, the annual amount is sufficient to melt 

 as much ice as would cover the whole surface of the 



