1-28 TKU'UOLUUIA MA.MMALIl.M ; 



Goldsmith is of opinion, that the reason why the hair of the cat kind of animals [Felis] 

 is more electric, is because.it is sleek and ylossy.* (Nat. Hist of Man., &c., v. c) , p 7.) 



If you rub the back of a person, standing upon a stool with glass feet, with the skin of 

 au animal tanned with the fur on, for a few minutes, he may light a gas-burner with his 

 linger. 



PILE AS A CONDUCTOR OR NON-CONDUCTOR OF CALoiw. Pile is a non-conductor of caloric. 

 According to the experiments of Count Rumford, it depends upon the degree of looseness 

 or tightness 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. But a 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 PILE. 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 aud sheep are almost naked, while the Siberian Dog and Ice- 

 land Sheep are provide:! 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 wool a few hairs on the lower 

 jaw, the ear and tail, heing all of which they can boast; whereas, the Mammoth, found 

 envelope I in ice on the banks of the river Lena, in Russia, had long hairs and warm wool. 

 In like manner (as it is 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: 1st, that a 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) 

 rnay 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 wild 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,! but we have never witnessed any such phenomenon. 



OF THE EFFECTS OF THE SKIN UPON PILE. Mr. Livingston (in his Essay upon Sheep) 



* Is it more electric than other unimals with hair and wool? 

 t Collect. Mules., Ac,, &v., 1681. 



