1833.] Miscellaneous. 653 



an effect upon the productions of animal and vegetable existence, and an arid one 

 towards the improvement of a great many of them, especially Horticultural, while 

 the softness of the goats' fleece seems to owe its existence to that cause, — the silk- 

 worm its superior procreative powers, and even the silk its finer structure ; — the 

 cats of those regions, Cabul especially, are well known; — when these and thousands 

 of others are the effects of those biight and eternally blue skies, we may infer that 

 the kirmes (Keerm, worm), or cochineal of Herat, Bokhara, and other places 

 requires only the application of skill to render it an appreciable commodity, and 

 even superior to the American species, except indeed that comes from the dry 

 regions of Chili and Peru. The bazar (retailj price of Cochineal at Herat is now six 

 Rs. per seer, country measures, or 32 St. Rs. per Indian seer. The moist opium of 

 the place sells at 44 Rs. per seer of India, and after one year when it is pretty dry, 

 at 70 Rs. ! while a species that comes from Yezd and Kain in Persia, in sticks like 

 sealing-wax and as brittle as a dried reed, sells at the enormous price of 80 to 100 

 Rs. per Indian seer. At Bokhara I procured some at 90 Rs. methinks the Hon'ble 

 Company's opium from Malwa at a productive cost of three Rs. per seer, would 

 realize remunerating profit in this country, where every production of nature or 

 art is so exorbitantly high-priced, (valuable.)" 



8. — Reply to the Questions of the Burmese Philosopher-Prince. 

 Sir, 



Having not yet seen, in your interesting Journal, any replies to the questions 

 proposed by the Burmese Prince, in vol. ii. p. 47, 1 venture to send you the follow- 

 ing for insertion, and hope they may be found satisfactory. 



Investigation of Sir Isaac Newton's statement, that some Comets have been raised, 

 by the effect of the sun's rays, to a heat, 900 times greater than that of red hot iron. 



Reply to 2nd Question. 



It is a well known fact*, that the force of heat varies, inversely, as the square 

 of the distance of the direct cause of that heat, from the object affected by it ; so 

 that in order to determine the above point, it is only necessary to refer to the 

 distance of the sun from the earth (95 millions of miles), where the measure of 

 force of his rays is known, and having the distance of a Comet from the sun, to 

 ascertain by the above rule, the degrees of heat to which the Comet has been raised, 

 and then with the aid of Wedgwood's, or any other pyrometer, shew, by calcula- 

 tion, the excess of heat of the Comet over that of red hot iron for the answer. 



In Newton's Philosophy by Maclaurin of the year 1748, page 373, it appears, 

 that the Comet of 1680 approached 166 times nearer to the sun, than our earth is ; 

 let this Comet therefore be taken for the investigation. 



Now the distance of the earth from the sun, 95,000,000 miles divided by 166 

 times is = 572,300 miles, or distance of the Comet from the sun ; consequently, 

 by the above rule inverse, as the square of 572,300 viz. 327,527,290,000 miles to 

 100 degrees of heat here, so is the square of 95,000,000, or 9,025,000,000,000,000 

 miles, to 2,755,500 degrees of heat of the Comet. 



The degrees in Wedgwood's Pyrometer, are reduced to their equivalent in 

 Farenheit's thermometer by multiplying them by 130, and adding 1,077 ; because 

 each degree of the former, is equal to 130 of the latter, and Wedgwood's first 

 degree commences at Fahrenheit's 1077th, (vide Fyfe's Elements of Chemistry of 



* Vide Ferguson's Astronomy, of 1790, p. 88. 



