' 384 Dr. Ore’s new experimental researches 
so excessive, as not only to equal, but greatly to overbalance 
the real increase in the specific heat of water ; which left to 
its own operation, would have produced opposite experimental 
results. 
That our thermometric scale has no such prodigious 
deviation from truth, or uniformity of indication, I conceive to 
be fully established, and therefore the only legitimate 
inference from these very experiments of Mr. Dalton, is the 
decreasing capacity of water with the increase of its tem- 
perature. 
It deserves to be remarked, that my experiments on the 
relative times of cooling a globe of glass, successively filled 
with water, oil of vitriol, common oil, &c. give exactly the 
same results as Mr. Dalton derived from mixtures of 2 ounces 
of ice and 60 of water. This concurrence is the more satis- 
factory, since, when the Essay on hydrochloric acid was 
written, I had no recollection of Mr. Dalton’s experiments. 
I found that from 210 0 to 150° the specific heat of oil bears 
to that of water the ratio of 597 to 1000 ; and from 150° to 
90°, that of 513 to 1000. Now, at his highest and middle 
temperatures of 200° and 120°, which come nearest to mine 
of 180° and 120°, we have by him the ratio of 1 760.5 to 150°. 
But 597 : 513 : : 176 : 150 exactly, which is a very strik- 
ing coincidence, and affords the happiest confirmation of the 
accuracy of both sets of experiments, as well as of the just- 
ness of the prinpiples on which they were conducted, and on 
which, particularly, my reductions were founded. We now 
see the reason why, when equal weights of water at 32 0 and 
212 0 are mixed, the temperature may be below the mean, as 
was found by De Luc. The capacity at the middle tempe- 
