BOOK ii.J APnorJSMS. 473 



possesses a mucTi more delicate susceptibility of heat and cold, 

 only that it is impeded and blunted by the grossness of their 

 bodies. 



39. After air, we consider those bodies to be most sensible of 

 heat, which have been recently changed and contracted by cold, 

 as snow and ice ; for they begin to be dissolved and melt witli 

 the first mild weather. Next, perhaps, follows quicksilver ; then 

 greasy substances, as oil, butter, and the like ; then wood ; then 

 water ; lastly, stones and metals, which do not easily grow liot, 

 particularly towards their centre.' When heated, however, they 

 retain their temperature for a very long time ; so that a brick or 

 stone, or hot iron, plunged in a basin of cold water, and kept 

 there for a quarter of an hour or thereabouts, retains such a heat 

 as not to admit of being touched. 



40. The less massive the body is, the more readily it gi'ows 

 warm at the approach of a heated body, which shows that heat 

 with us is somewhat averse to a tangible mass.if 



41. Heat with regard to the human senses and touch is 

 various and relative, so that lukewarm water appears hot if the 

 hand be cold, and cold if the hand be hot. 



XIV. Any one may readily see how poor we are in history, 

 since in the above tables, besides occasionally inserting traditions 

 and report instead of approved history and authentic instances 

 (always, however, adding some note if their credit or authority 

 be doubtful), we are often forced to subjoin, " Let the experiment 

 betried — Let further inquiry be made." 



XV. IVe are wont to term the office and use of these three 

 tables the presenting a review of instances to the understandinLT ; 

 and when this has been done, induction itself is to be brougiit 

 into action. For on an individual rev iew of nil tlip ingfnnpps ;i 

 n ature is to bf^ found, unch as alwnya to he prpsfnt and absent 

 with the given nature, to increase and decrease with it, and, as 

 we have said, to form a more common limit of the nature. If 

 the mind attempt this affirmatively from the first (which it 

 always will when left to itself), there will spring up phantoms, 



' Bacon appears to have confounded combustibility and fusibility 

 ■with susceptibility of heat; for though the metals will certainly neither 

 dissolve as soon as ice or butter, nor he consumed as soon as wood, 

 that only shows that different degrees of heat are required to produce 

 similar effects on different bodies ; but metals much more readily ac- 

 quire and transmit the same degree of heat than any of the above 

 substances. The rapid transmission renders them generally cold to 

 the touch. The convenience of fixing wooden handles to vessels con- 

 taining hot water illustrates these observations. 



n Another singular error, the truth being, that solid bodies are the 

 best conductors ; but of course where heat is diffused over a large mass, 

 it is less in each part, than if that nart alone absorbed the whole quan< urn 

 of heat. Ed. 



