234 ANIMAL HEAT. 



Dr. Berger found various warm and cold-blooded animals support 

 from 108 to 113 for an hour and a half in heated dry air; but 

 an elevation of about 30 beyond this killed them all, except a 

 frog, in from half an hour to two hours. They themselves expe- 

 rienced a sense of scalding in a vapour-bath ot 122, and could not 

 bear it more than about ten minutes; while M. Lemonnier could 

 not bear a water-bath of 113 above eight minutes. 4 Hence, at 

 the very same high temperature of the surrounding medium, 

 there is more secretion by the skin in a vapour-bath than in dry 

 air, and more in a water-bath than in a vapour-bath. 



" The striking prerogative of man, in respect of bearing a variety 

 of temperatures, is evinced by his being restricted to no climate, 

 but inhabiting every part of the earth, from Hudson's Bay, where 

 mercury freezes, and from Nova Zembla, to the scorching shores 

 of Senegal." 



At Sierra Leone, the mean temperature is 84, and Watt and 

 "Winterbottom frequently saw it 100 and even 103 in the 

 shade. At Senegal, it has been 108 J, and even 11 7|. During 

 the sirocco, it is 112 in Sicily; Humboldt saw it 110 and 115 

 near Oronoco, in South America. On the other hand, at Nova 

 Zembla the cold is so intense that, when the sun sinks below the 

 horizon, the polar bear is no longer seen, the white fox only en- 

 during the cold. Yet the Dutch, who wintered there under 

 Hemskerk (76 N. L.), withstood the cold, if moving about and 

 previously in good health. When some of our countrymen were 

 on Churchill River, in Hudson's Bay, lakes ten or twelve feet 

 deep were frozen to the bottom, and brandy froze in their 

 rooms, though provided with fires. They suspended in their 

 rooms red-hot twenty-four pounders, and kept an immense fire : 

 but, if these went down, the walls and beds were covered with 

 ice three inches thick." Yet in Hudson's Bay the Canadians and 

 Esquimaux live and hunt in the coldest weather. Gmelin, sen. 

 witnessed at Jeniseisk, in 1735, a cold of 20, that froze mer- 

 cury and killed all the sparrows and jays. x Captain Parry once 

 observed a temperature of 52 below zero. When the air was at 

 49, the party used to walk on the shore. It was usually at 32. 

 The temperature of eleven out of sixteen foxes was from 100 

 to 106 j, of four about 100, and of one only 98, although the 



1 Dr. Edwards, 1. c. p. 374., and indeed, see p. 4. ch. xiv 

 u Philosophical Transactions, abridged, vol. Hi. p. 470. 

 * Flora Sibirica. Preface. 



