630 Life of Count Rumford. 



of the scientific writings and experiments of Count 

 Rumford, he connects with each of them some abate- 

 ment of the consideration due him, or some depreci- 

 atory remark. He says that the Count's conclusion 

 " that heat is not a substance, but mere motion," " is 

 going rather farther than the experiments warrant. 

 There is nothing absurd in supposing that friction has 

 the property of drawing heat continually from the sur- 

 rounding bodies, just as it does electricity, though it 

 is not in our power to explain how it produces this 

 effect." 



After this specimen of Dr. Thomson's scientific 

 appreciation, we are hardly surprised at reading the 

 following sentences : 



"The seventh Essay, in which the Count endeavored to 

 prove that fluids are non-conductors of heat, has been suffi- 

 ciently refuted by the more decisive experiments of subsequent 

 chemists. Indeed, the Count himself, though abundantly obsti- 

 nate, appears at last to have given up his opinion. 



"The publication of Mr. Leslie's book on Heat, in which this 

 subject is treated of at much greater length and much more 

 completely, has deprived his inquiry concerning the nature of 

 heat and the modes of its communication [in Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1804] of most of its interest."* 



Of all those who personally knew Count Rumford, 

 his early friend and life-long admirer, Colonel Baldwin, 

 would doubtless have been his wisest and most consid- 

 erate biographer. The Count was in manhood pre- 

 cisely what he had been in youth, with the development 

 of nature and the field of opportunities to call out his 

 real self. But this friend, who was not spared to write 

 about his playmate and school-fellow after his eventful 

 and eminent career had closed, had already published 



* Annals of Philosophy, Vol. V. pp. 141-250. London, 1815. 



