460 Life of Count Rumford. 



attention on his first residence in England. The ques- 

 tion came back to him with new force many years after- 

 wards in connection with the following incident. His 

 dinner, a bowl of thick rice soup, having been brought 

 in to him one day when he was very busy, he ordered it 

 set upon the stove, that it might not grow cold. The 

 soup was hot, and the stove was probably cool at the 

 moment, though fresh fuel was soon put in. When the 

 Count was at leisure, feeling very hungry, he turned to 

 his soup and taking a spoonful from near the sur- 

 face, found it cold and thick. Putting the spoon in 

 deeper the second time, he burned his mouth. Why 

 was this so ? Some phenomena which he observed 

 when at Naples, in 1794, he visited the hot springs at 

 Baia, also engaged his interest in the same direction, and 

 even, he says, "astonished" him. 



" Standing on the sea-shore, near the baths, where the hot 

 steam was issuing out of every crevice of the rocks, and even 

 rising up out of the ground, I had the curiosity to put my hand 

 into the water. As the waves which came in from the sea 

 followed each other without intermission, and broke over the 

 even surface of the beach, I was not surprised to find the water 

 cold ; but I was more than surprised, when, on running the 

 ends of my fingers through the cold water into the sand, I 

 found the heat so intolerable that I was obliged instantly to 

 remove my hand. The sand was perfectly wet, and yet the 

 temperature was so very different at the small distance of two 

 or three inches ! I could not reconcile this with the supposed 

 great conducting power of water. I even found that the top of 

 the sand was, to all appearance, quite as cold as the water 

 which Howed over it ; and this increased my astonishment still 

 more. I then, for the first time, began to doubt of the con- 

 ducting power of water, and resolved to set about making ex- 

 periments to ascertain the facts." 



