346 REFRIGERATION. 



base the temperature \vas intensely high, their 

 temperature at which point is found gradually 

 to sink towards the summit, the whole of 

 those mountains are constantly coated and 

 covered with ice and snow.* The actual ex- 

 existence of ice and of snow, in those regions, 

 decidedly proves that the solar rays are not 

 ignious rays, and that the sun is not, as Sir I. 

 Newton supposed it to be, a globe of fire. The 

 effects which ice and snow produce on other 

 bodies, are as definite and positive, as those 

 which are produced by fire ; the power of fire 

 to produce the sensation of warmth is not more 

 manifest, than of ice to excite the sensation of 

 cold; the one of expanding bodies, the other of 

 contracting them. 



Instead of ice subsisting as the negative of 

 jfire, or cold the negative of heat, I consider that 

 the former is as positive as the latter, as 

 positive and separate, as the attributes of those 

 bodies which excite the sensations of sweet- 

 ness and of bitterness of odor and of sound. 

 I shall not stop, at present, to examine the 

 means by which the process of refrigeration is 

 accelerated and retarded^ or to investigate the 

 nature of those causes, by the operation of 

 which it is accomplished, by which the liquid 

 and aqueous particles, after being converted 

 from a liquid to 'a gaseous form, and raised from 



* Vide page 153. 



