744 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIOXS. 
of extreme degrees of lieat uiid cold is well known. The 
experiment performed by Dr. Fordyce on Sir Joseph Ihinks, 
and Sir James Blagden, well illustrates tlic first named. 
The Doctor prepared an apartment, which he gradually 
heated to the temperature of 2(34° Fahr., or 52° hotter than 
boiling water. Into this the two valiant knights entered, 
and remained in it till, as we are informed, eggs were 
roasted, and a rump-steak cooked; yet tliey themselves 
experienced but little inconvenience. Still higher tempe¬ 
ratures than this have been, and constantly are, resisted 
by artisans in drying and other furnaces, also in smelting- 
works, &c. Lately the Earl of Shaftesbury told his as- 
sembled peers, of children of tender years being con • 
stantly employed in stoves, or ovens, in Staffordshire 
pottery wmrks, twelve feet square, and from eight to twelve 
feet high, in one of which the thermometer stood at 126°, in 
another at 130°, and in a third at 148°. Surely here w'as 
enough to test the powers of resistance; but how often is 
this at the expense, if not of life, at least of health, while 
the moral and physical effects are to the helpless workers 
in such places most ruinous. 
Of the latter—extreme degrees of cold—the Arctic 
voyagers, perhaps, afford the most striking and interesting 
proofs. Dr. Kane, of the U.S. navy, when at the head 
of Smithes Sound, North America, in 1851, ascertained the 
temperature to be 70° below zero. Chloric ether, lie 
states, froze, and fifty-seven dogs perished, with symptoms 
resembling hydrophobia. Captain McClure, the discoverer 
of the north-west passage, in the winter of 1852-3, which 
he describes as terrible,^^ found the average temperature 
to be 44° below zero; and on one occasion it was 65°. 
Nor are the recent balloon ascents by Mr. Glaisher 
without interest in this respect. He says, when four and 
a half miles high, the temperature was just zero of Fahren¬ 
heit's scale. On descending, his companion, Mr. Coxw'ell, 
forgetful of the fact that the grapnell had been exposed to 
this temperature, took hold of it with his naked hands, and 
cried out as in pain, that he was scalded; the sensation 
being exactly that produced by scalding water. 
