THE 



AMERICAN 

 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, &c. 



Art. I. — General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial 

 Globe and the Planetary Spaces ; by Baron Fourier.* 



Translated from the French, by Mr. Edenezer Burgess, of Amherst College. 



The question of terrestrial temperature, one of the most remark- 

 able and difficult in natural philosophy, involves very different ele- 

 ments which require to be considered in a general light. I have 

 thought it would be useful to have condensed in a single essay, all 

 the results of this theory. The analytical details here admitted, are 

 found in works which I have already published. 1 was specially 

 desirous of presenting to philosophers, in a concise table, a complete 

 view of the phenomena and the mathematical relations which exist 

 between them. 



The heat of the earth is derived from three sources, which should 

 first be distinctly mentioned. 



1. The earth is heated by the solar rays; the unequal distribution 

 of which causes diversities of cHmate. 



* TO PROFESSOR SILLIMAN. 



Dear Sir — Although it is several years since they were published in France, I 

 have never met with a translation of any of Baron Fourier's able papers on the 

 temperature of the globe, nor seen in the English language a full view of the im- 

 portant principles which they develop. I have, therefore, requested Mr. Ebene- 

 zer Burgess, a tutor in Amherst College, to make a translation from the 27th No. 

 of the Annales de Chimie et de Physique, of an article of Fourier, in which he 

 gives a summary of the results to which he has come on the subject, by the use of 

 mathematical analysis. And should your views of the value of this paper cor- 

 respond with my own, I hope you may find a place for it, even at this late day, in 

 your Journal. With much respect, 



Amherst College, Jvly ith, 1836. Edward Hitchcock. 



Vol. XXXIL— No. 1. 1 



