SUMMARY OF RUMFOKD's CLAIMS. XXV 



statement. ISTo account was taken of the heat lost by radiation, 

 which, considering the high temperature produced, and the dura- 

 tion of the experiment, must have been considerable ; so that as 

 Rumford himself noticed, this value must be too high. The ear- 

 liest numerical results in science are rarely more than rough ap- 

 proximations, yet they may guide to the establishment of great 

 principles. Certainly no one could question Dalton's claim to the 

 discovery of the law of definite proportions, because of the inac- 

 curacy of the numbers upon which he first rested it. 



We are called further to note that Rumford's ideas upon the 

 general subject of forces were far in advance of his age. He saw 

 the relation of all friction to heat, and suggested that of fluids, by 

 churning processes, as a means of producing it precisely the 

 method finally employed by Joule in establishing the mechanical 

 equivalent of heat. He furthermore regarded animals dynami- 

 cally, considering their force as the derivative of their food, and 

 therefore as not created. That Rumford held these views in the 

 comprehensive and matured sense in which they are now enter- 

 tained is, of course, not asserted. The advance from his day to 

 ours has been prodigious. Whole sciences have been created, 

 which afford the most beautiful exemplifications of the new doc- 

 trines. Those doctrines have received their subsequent develop- 

 ment in various directions by many minds, but we may be allowed 

 to question if the contributions of any of their promoters will sur- 

 pass, if indeed they will equal, the value and importance which we 

 must assign to the first great experimental step in the new direc- 

 tion. 



The claims of Rumford may be summarized as follows : 



I. He was the man who first took the question of the nature 

 of heat out of the domain of metaphysics, where it had 

 been speculated upon since the time of Aristotle, and 

 placed it upon the true basis of physical experiment. 



II. He first proved the insufficiency of the current explanations 



