52 THE EOYAL INSTITUTION. [CHAP. I. 



particular kind of motion which has been supposed to 

 constitute heat is excited, continued, and propagated. 

 Nobody surely in his sober senses has ever pretended to 

 understand the mechanism of gravitation, and yet what 

 sublime discovery was our immortal Newton enabled to 

 make merely by the investigation of the laws of its 

 action ! ' 



The account of these experiments was read to the 

 Royal Society, January 25, 1798. 



Some interesting facts regarding this paper are to 

 be found in the correspondence of Sir C. Blagden with 

 Sir J. Banks. 



DEAR SIR JOSEPH, Count Rumford's paper on Friction, 

 together with your letter, were safely delivered to me by 

 Lord Palmerston. The paper is by no means incorrect 

 in itself, nor has the copyist made any remarkable 

 blunders, and it is valuable from the large scale on which 

 the experiments were tried, and the quantity of heat 

 produced in consequence. As the result of the experi- 

 ments was such as the Count himself foresaw, and as 

 every other philosopher would have expected, they do 

 not furnish any new argument in favour of the opinion 

 he has adopted that heat is motion, though perhaps 

 they add force to the old ones. There is, however, an 

 experiment of some consequence if it can be depended upon ; 

 namely, that which seemed to show that the shavings cut 

 by the borer out of the cannon had the same capacity 

 for heat as the metal on which the borer had not acted ; 

 but I do not feel much confidence in experiments of this 

 nature. You will recollect that one opinion pretty much 

 adopted on this subject is that the heat produced in 

 boring a cannon depends on the compression of the metal 

 of the cannon by the borer, in consequence of which it 

 gives out heat ; on the principle that the same body has 



