. 2. 1. IT. OF VOLITION. 347 



and other animals, are so often preserved. The snow, both in 

 respect to its component parts, and to the air contained in its 

 pores, is a bad conductor of heat, and will therefore well keep 

 out the external cold; and as the water, when part of it-dissolves,, 

 is attracted into the pores of the remainder of it, the situatic/n of 

 an animal beneath it is perfectly dry; and, if he is in contact 

 with the earth, he is in a degree of heat between 48, the medium 

 heat of the earth, and 32, the freezing point; that is, in 40 de- 

 grees of heat, in which a man thus covered will be as warm as 

 in bed. See Botan. Garden, V. II. notes on Anemone, Baro- 

 metz, and Muscus. If these facts were more generally under- 

 stood, it might annually save the lives of many. 



After any part of the vascular system of the body has been 

 long exposed to cold, the sensorial power is so much accumu- 

 lated in it, that on corning into a warm room the pain of hot- 

 ach is produced, and inflammation, and consequent mortifica- 

 tion, owing to the great exertion of those vessels, when again ex- 

 posed to a moderate degree of warmth. See Sect. XII. 5. 

 Whence the propriety of applying but very low degrees of heat 

 to limbs benumbed with cold at first, as of snow in its state of 

 dissolving, which is at 32 degrees of heat, or of very cold water. 

 A French writer has observed, that if frozen apples be thawed 

 gradually by covering them with thawing snow, or immersing 

 them in very cold water, they do not lose their taste; if this 

 fact was well ascertained, it might teach us how to preserve 

 other ripe fruits in ice-houses for winter consumption. See Sup. 

 I. 14. 3. 



The pain of cold is probably owing to the accumulation of the 

 sensorial power of irritation. As the skins of those, who have 

 been constantly stimulated into great action by external heat, 

 must soon possess an accumulation of that sensorial power, when 

 the stimulus of heat is withdrawn. See taedium vitae from ac- 

 cumulation of the sensorial power of volition, III. 1.2,11, 



