Count Rumford's Inquiry , &c. Bi 
Being engaged, lately, in superintending the boring of can- 
non, in the workshops of the military arsenal at Munich, I 
was struck with the very considerable degree of heat which a 
brass gun acquires, in a short time, in being bored; and with 
the still more intense heat (much greater than that of boiling 
water, as I found by experiment,) of the metallic chips sepa- 
rated from it by the borer. 
The more I meditated on these phaenomena, the more they 
appeared to me to be curious and interesting. A thorough in- 
vestigation of them seemed even to bid fair to give a farther 
insight into the hidden nature of heat; and to enable us to 
form some reasonable conjectures respecting the existence, or 
non-existence, of an igneous fluid: a subject on which the opi- 
nions of philosophers have, in all ages, been much divided. 
In order that the Society may have clear and distinct ideas 
of the speculations and reasonings to which these appearances 
gave rise in my mind, and also of the specific objects of phi- 
losophical investigation they suggested to me, I must beg leave 
to state them at some length, and in such manner as I shall 
think best suited to answer this purpose. 
, From zvhence comes the heat actually produced in the mecha- 
nical operation above mentioned ? 
Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by 
the borer from the solid mass of metal ? 
If this were the case, then, according to the modern doc- 
trines of latent heat, and of caloric, the capacity for heat of the 
parts of the metal, so reduced to chips, ought not only to be 
changed, but the change undergone by them should be suffi- 
ciently great to account for all the heat produced. 
But no such change had taken place; for I found, upon 
Kdccxcviil M 
