THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
AUGUST, 1 883. 
I. WASTE. 
J N our last number we gave a few scattered instances of 
Nature’s seeming wastefulness in the world of life. 
We will now seek to trace a similar want of economy 
in the management and preservation of heat. Two points 
will be admitted at the outset- — that certain temperatures 
ranging from 32 0 F. to about ioo° F. are necessary for the 
existence of, at least, all the higher forms of animal and 
vegetable life ; and secondly, that the universe is, as a 
whole, very poor in this primary requisite. As far as our 
physicists are able to calculate the temperature of the vast 
regions of space, lying between sun and sun, and even 
between sun and planet, is about "-273° C, or 470° F. below 
zero— a degree of cold which no living being with which we 
are acquainted could possibly survive. Being then so neces- 
sary,— in faCt forming the working capital of the universe, — 
and so scanty in its amount, we might fairly expeCt that it 
would be carefully utilised, and that its loss would be 
jealously guarded against. This, however, is precisely 
what we do not find. The only sources of heat of which 
we are aware are those large luminous bodies of which our 
sun is the most familiar instance. These orbs, in conven- 
tional language, radiate light and heat in all directions. 
But this radiation does not at all warm the depths of space 
through which it passes ; it is only when it impinges upon 
solid bodies like the earth’s crust, or traverses certain gases 
and vapours, that the effeCt which we call heat is produced. 
To what an extent this holds good we learn from the expe- 
rience of mountain-climbers and aeronauts, who, in propor- 
tion as the air becomes rarefied, find the sun’s rays losing 
VOL. V. (THIRD SERIES.) 2 G 
