Estimate above deliver'd of the Expansion of water and that grand Hydrostatical Theorem demonstrated by Archimedes and Stevinus That floating Bodies will so far and but so far sink in the Liquor that supports them till the immersed part of the Body be equal to a Bulk of water weighing as much as the whole Body For Captain James in his often cited Voyage makes mention of great pieces of Ice that were twice as high as the Top-mast-head of his Ship 6. And the Hollanders in their famous Voyage to Nova Zembla mention one stupendious Hill of Ice which I therefore take notice of here not only because it has been thought the greatest that men have met with but because they deliver its Dimensions not as Captain James and Navigators are wont to do by comparison with the unknown heights of some of the Masts of their Ships but by certain and determinate Measures which in the Icy Island we are speaking of were so divided by the surface of the water that there was 16. fathome extant above it though there were but 36. beneath it which though a vast depth in it self yet 〈◊〉 but little exceed double the height And the Danish Navigator Janus Munckius imploy'd by his King to bring him an Account of Greenland mentions some floating pieces of Ice that he met with and observ'd in that Sea which though but somewhat above 40. fathome under water were extant 20. fathome that is near half as much above water whereas it seems that according to our above mention'd Computation of the Expansion of water the part under the water ought to be eight or nine times as deep as that above the water is high 7. To clear this difficulty I shall represent these three particulars First that in our Computation the Ice that sinks so deep is suppos'd to float in fresh water whereas in the Observations of the above nam'd Navigators those vast pieces of Ice floated on the Sea-water which by reason of its saltness being heavier then fresh-water Ice will not sink so deep into that as into this And that salt may hugely increase the weight of the water wherein it is dissolv'd may be clearly gather'd from the ponderousness of common Brine and from the practise of several sorts of Tradesmen who to examine the strength of their Lixiviums and other Saline Liquors are wont to try whether they will keep an Egg floating which we know common water will not do And I have also by the Resolution of some Metalline Bodies in fit Menstruums made Liquors that are yet much more ponderous then is sufficient for the support of Eggs. But yet we must be so candid as to take notice of what some Modern Geographers deliver with probability enough namely That nearer the poles the Seas are not wont to be so salt as in the temperate and the Torrid Zones and those Northern being not so salt as our Seas there is the less to be allow'd for the difference in gravity and consequently in the power to keep Ice from sinking betwixt those Seas and ours 8. But secondly this lesser saltness of the water in the Northern Seas may as to our case be recompenc'd by the greater coldness of it For though as we have formerly observed the Condensation of fresh water effected here by a degree of Cold capable to make it begin to freez is not so great as most men would imagine yet besides that I have often taken pleasure to make the same Body to sink or ascend in the same water by a much less variation 〈◊〉 Cold then that we have been mentioning it is to be consider'd that the degree of Cold to which water was brought in the Experiment deliver'd in the fourth Section to which we are now looking back was but such a degree as would make fresh water begin to freez whereas the salt Sea-water being indispos'd to congelation may by so vehement a Cold as reigns in the Winter season in those gelid Climates be far more intensly refrigerated and thereby more condens'd then common water is here by such a measure of Cold as may begin to freez small portions of it But though what we have hitherto represented may well be look'd upon as not inconsiderable to the purpose for which it has been alledg'd yet the main thing that is to remove the scruple suggested by the height of Icy hills above the water is 9. Thirdly that such Hills of Ice are not to be look'd upon as intire and solid ones but as vast piles or lumps and masses of Ice casually and rudely heap'd up and cemented by the excessive Cold freezing them together by the intervention of the water that washes them which piles of many pieces of Ice are not made without great Cavities intercepted and fill'd only with Air between the more solid Cakes or Lumps so that the weight of these stupendious pieces of Ice is not to be estimated by the bigness they appear of at a distance from the Eye but considering how much Air there is intercepted between the Icy Bodies of which they are compiled there may be a hollow structure of Ice reaching high into the Air and yet the whole Aggregate or Icy pile will press the subjacent water on which it leans no more then would as much water as were equal in Bulk only to the immers'd parts as we see in Barges loaden with Boards which though pil'd up to a great height above the water make not the vessel to sink more then a Lading that would make a far less show and oftentimes be all contain'd within the Cavity of the vessel provided it be more ponderous in specie But to enter into any further Consideration of these Hydrostatical matters would be improper in this place especially since we have elsewhere treated of them And that these floating Hills and Islands of Ice are not intire and solid pieces of it we shall otherwhere have occasion to shew out of Navigators and even in the Observation we have mentioned out of Janus Munck the Learned Relator of it Bartholinus takes notice that those vast pieces of Ice we have been mentioning that reach'd 20 fathome above water were compiled of store of Snow frozen together 10. These Considerations may serve to render some Account of those stupendiously tall pieces of ice whose extant part bears so great a proportion to the immersed part when the whole mass does really float But I confess I doubt that not only in the Examples we have alledg'd but in other eminent ones of mountains of ice if I may so call them there may be a mistake and that the height of them above the water would be far less and the depth under water far greater if the ice had water enough to swim freely For Sea-men by reason of the difficulty are not wont to measure the height of those pieces that float at liberty in the Sea And as for those that are on ground as their heights lye far more convenient
with him supplied him so well with Air that he was not incommodated in point of Respiration and though he felt no other inconveniencies that might disswade his tarrying longer yet the cold was so great and troublesome that he was not able to endure it above two or three hours but was constrain'd to remount to a milder as well as a higher Region I wish'd several times he had had with him a seal'd Weather-glass for ordinary Thermometers would on that occasion have been unserviceable to prevent some little doubt that might be made whether the intense Cold he felt might not be only and chiefly in reference to his Body which might be so alter'd and dispos'd by this new Briny Ambient as to make such a disturbance in the course or texture of his Blood as that which makes Aguish persons so cold at the beginning of the fit though the temperature of the Ambient Body continue the same But this is not the only person that found the Sea Exceeding cold for I remember Beguinus relates from the mouth of a Marseillian Knight that was overseer of the Coral-fishing in the Kingdom of Tunis that having upon that coast let down a young man to feel whether Coral were hard or soft as it grew in the water when this man was come about eight fathom near the Bottom of the Sea he felt it exceeding cold To which we shall add the testimony of a sober Traveller Josephus Acosta who tells us That it is a thing remarkable that in the depth of the Ocean the water cannot be made hot by the violence of the Sun as in Rivers Finally he subjoyns even as Salt-Petre though it be of the nature of Salt hath the property to cool water even so we see by experience that in some parts and havens the salt water doth refresh the which we have observed in that of Callao where they put the water or wine which they drink into the Sea in Flaggons to be refreshed whereby we may undoubtedly find that the Ocean hath this property to temper and moderate the excessive heat For this cause we feel greater heat at Land then at Sea caeteris paribus and commonly Countries lying near the Sea are cooler then those that are farther off By all these testimonies it seems to appear that both in very cold Regions and very hot the deep parts of the Sea seem to be very Cold the Sun beams being not able to penetrate the Sea to any great depth for I remember that having enquired of the Diver I lately mentioned whether he could discern the light of the Sun at any great distance from the surface of the water he answered me that he could not but as he went down deeper and deeper so he found it darker and darker and that to a degree that would scarce have been expected in so Diaphanous a Body as water is 17. But this submarine cold if I may so call it though it be great and considerable is not so intense as to intitle water to be the primum frigidum since as cold as our Divers found it at the bottom of the Sea they did not find it cold enough to freez the water there as the Air often does at the Top. 18. The next Opinion we are to consider is that of the Stoicks of old and adopted by the generality of Modern Philosophers that are not Peripateticks who assert the Air to be the primum frigidum But being ere long more particularly to treat of the Temperature of the Air we will reserve till then to examine whether it be cold of its own nature or not but in the mean time we shall here take leave to question whether it ought to be esteem'd the primum frigidum For not to mention that Aristotle and the Schools with many other learned men think the Air so far from being the coldest of the Elements that they reckon it among the hot ones because I confels their opinion is not mine not to represent the heat of the Air in the Torrid Zone nor that by the generality of Philosophers the upper Region of the Air which is believed to make incomparably the greatest part of it is always hot and the lower Region is so too in comparison of the middle though the coldness even of this is not perhaps unquestionable not to urge any of these things I say I shall in this place mention only two observations 19. The one is that which I lately recited touching the great coldness of the water in the deeper parts of the Sea for'tis not easie to show how this great cold proceeds from that of the Air whose operation seems not as may be judg'd by that little way that frosts pierce into the moist Earth to reach very far beneath the surface of the water insomuch that Captain James who had very good opportunity to try allows not in case the Ice be not made by accumulation that the Frost pierces above two yards perpendicularly downwards from the surface of the water even in the coldest habitable Regions And this will seem the more rational if we consider that in case the coldness of the Sea proceeded constantly from the Air as such the cold would be greater near the surface where 't is contiguous to the Air then in the parts remoter from it and yet the contrary may appear by the passages lately recited 20. But if it be objected that this at best can prove no more then that the Air is not the primum frigidum notwithstanding which it may be the summum frigidum For answer I must proceed to my second Argument which will perhaps evince that it is not that neither for by the same way of arguing by which those I am now dealing with endeavour to prove the Air to be the coldest Body in the World I shall endeavour to prove that it is not so For their grand and as far as I remember their only considerable Argument is drawn from Experience which shows that water begins to freez at the Top where 't is exposed to the Air but to this vulgar Experiment I oppose that of mine which I have often mentioned already to other purposes that by an application of salt and snow I can make water that would else freez at the Top begin to freez at the Bottom or at any side I please and that much sooner then the common Air even in a sharp frosty night would be able to congeal it and when in exceeding cold weather the Ambient Nocturnal Air had reduc'd a parcel of Air purposely included in a convenient glass to as great a degree of condensation as it could I have more then once by the External application of other things been able to condense it much farther which argues that 't is not the Air as such but some adventitious frigorifick Corpuscles taking that term as I do in this Treatise in a large sense that may sometimes be mingled with it which produce the notablest degrees of
may be very warrantably question'd For 't is evident in waters we expose to freez in large vessels that the congelations begin at the surface where the liquor is 〈◊〉 to the Air and thence as the cold continues to prevail the ice increases and thickens downwards and therefore we see that Frogs retire themselves in frosty weather to the bottom of ditches whence I have had many of them taken out very brisk and vigorous from under the thick ice that cover'd the water And I have been informed by an observing person that at least in some places 't is usual in Winter for shoals of Fishes to retire to those depths of the Sea if not of Rivers also where they are not to be found in Summer Besides if Rivers were frozen at the 〈◊〉 we must very frequently meet in the emergent pieces of ice the shapes of those irregular Cavities and Protuberances that are often to be found in the uneven soils over which Rivers take their course whereas generally those emergent pieces of ice are flat as those flakes that are generated on the surface of the water Moreover if even deep rivers freez first at the bottom why should not very many Springs and Wells 〈◊〉 first at the bottom too the contrary of which nevertheless is obvious to be observ'd In confirmation of all which we may make use of what we formerly noted in the Section of the Primum Frigidum about the 〈◊〉 of the Masters of the French Salt-works who by overflowing the Banks and Causeways all the winter keep them from being spoil'd by the srost which could not be done if the waters they stand under froze as well at the bottom as at the Top. But I find that that which deceives our Water-men is that they often observe flakes of ice to ascend from the bottom of Rivers to the Top and indeed it often happens that after the hard frost has continued a while these emergent pieces of ice do very much contribute to the freezing over of Rivers For coming in some of the narrower parts of them to be stopp'd by the superficial ice that reaches on each side of the River a good way from the Banks towards the middle those flat icy bodies are easily cemented by the violence of the cold and by the help of the contiguous water to one another and by degrees straitning and at length choaking up the passage they give a stop to the other flakes of ice that either emerging from the bottom or loosened from the banks of the River or carried down the stream towards them and these being also by the same Cold cemented to the rest the River is at length quite frozen over And the reason why so many flakes of ice come from the bottom of the River seems to be that after the water has been frozen all along near the banks either the warmth of the Sun by day or some of those many casualties that may perform such a thing does by thawing the ground or otherwise loosen many pieces of that ice together with the earth stones c. that they adher'd to from the more stable parts of the banks and these heavy bodies do by their weight carry down with them the ice they are fastned to but then the water at the bottom of the river being warm in comparison of the Air in frosty weather since that even common water is so we have manifested by experience where we show how much sooner ice will be dissolv'd in water then thaw'd in Air the dispers'd ice is by degrees so wrought upon that those parts by which it held to the stones earth or other heavy bodies being resolv'd the remaining ice being much lighter bulk for bulk then water gets loose and straightway emerges and may perhaps carry up with it divers stones and clods of earth that may yet happen to stick to it or be inclos'd in it the sight of which perswades the Water-man that the flakes of ice were generated at the bottom of the river whereas a large piece of ice may carry up and support bodies of that kind of a great 〈◊〉 in case the ice it self be proportionably great so that the Aggregate of the ice and heavy bodies 〈◊〉 not the weight of an equal bulk of water On which occasion I remember that Captain James Hall in a voyage extant in Purchas relates that upon a large piece of ice in the Sea they found a great stone which they judg'd to be three hundred pound weight But of the Tradition of the Water-men we shall say no more then that this hath been discours'd but upon no great information though the best we could procure so that for further satisfaction it were to be desir'd that either by sending down a Diver or by letting down some instrument fit to feel if I may so speak the bottom of Rivers with and to try whether ice if it met with any be loose from or uniformly coherent to the ground and also bring up parcels of whatever stuff it meets with there the matter were by Competent Experiments put out of doubt We took a seal'd Weather-glass furnish'd with spirit of Wine and though not above 10. inches long in all yet sensible enough and having caus'd a hole to be made in the Cover of a Box just wide enough for the smaller end of the Glass to be thrust in at we inverted the Thermometer so that the ball of it rested upon the cover of a Box and the pipe pointed directly downwards then we placed about the ball a little beaten ice and salt and observ'd whether according to our expectation the tincted spirit that reach'd to the middle of the pipe or thereabouts would be retracted upon the refrigeration of the liquor in the ball and accordingly the spirit did in very few minutes ascend in that short pipe above an inch higher then a mark whereby we took notice of its former station and would perhaps have ascended much more if the application of the frigorifick mixture had been continued by which and another succeeding Experiment to the same purpose it seems that the condensation of liquors by cold is not always effected by their proper gravity only which ordinarily may be sufficient to make the parts fall closer together but whether in our case the contraction be assisted by some little tenacity in the liquor or by the spring of some little aerial or other spirituous and Elastick particles from which the instrument was not perfectly freed when it was seal'd up or which happened to be generated within it afterwards will be among orher things more properly inquir'd into in another place where we may have occasion to make use of this Experiment There is a famous Tradition that in Muscovy and some other cold Countries 't is usual out of Ponds and Rivers to take up good numbers of Swallows inclos'd in pieces of ice and that the benumm'd birds upon the thawing of the ice in a warm room will come to
taken notice of were able to vary their success In confirmation of what is delivered in the VII Section about the expansion of water by freezing I shall add that having caus'd some strong glass-Bottles of a not inconsiderable bignéss to be fill'd with a congealable liquor excepting the necks which were fill'd with Sallet oyl I observ'd that in a somewhat long and very sharp frost the contained water was so far expanded by congelation that it not only thrust up the corks but the cold having taken away the defluency of the oyl that liquor together with the water that could no longer be contain'd in the Cavities of the glasses being as it seem'd frozen as fast as it was thrust out of the neck there appear'd quite above the upper part of the Bottles Cylinders of divers inches in height consisting partly of concreted oyl and partly of congeal'd water having on their tops the corks that had been rais'd by them It is a Tradition very currant among us that when Ponds or Rivers are frozen over unless the ice be seasonably broken in several places the Fishes will dye for want of Air. And I find this Tradition to be more general then before I made particular inquiry into it I knew of For Olaus Magnus mentions it more then once without at all questioning the truth of it but rather as if the general practise of the Northern Nations to break in divers places their frozen Ponds and Rivers were grounded upon the certainty of it In the twentieth Book which treats of Fishes after having spoke of the reasons why the Northern Fishermen imploy so much pains and industry to fish under the ice and having said among other things that the nature of the Fish exacts it he adds this reason that Nisi glacie perforata respiracula susciperent quotquot in flumine vel stagno versantur subito morerentur Another passage of the same Author and taken likewise out of the same 20. Book you may meet with in the Margent though in another place he seems to intimate another and not an absurd reason of the death of Fishes in Winter where advertising the Reader that Ponds and Lakes did generally begin to freez in October he adds that Fishes are usually found suffocated when the Thaw comes where veins or springs of living water do not enter by which passage he seems to make the want of shifted water cooperate to the suffocation of the Fishes And to the same purpose I shall now add that having inquir'd of a learned Native that had had about Cracovia whose Territory is said to abound much in Ponds whether the Polanders also us'd the same custome he answered me that they did and that sometimes in larger Ponds they were careful to break the ice in eight or ten several places to make so many either vents or Air-holes for the preservation as they suppos'd of the Fish And when I inquir'd of the often mention'd Russian Emperors Physician whether in Muscovy the frost kill'd the Fishes in the Ponds in case the ice were not broken to give them Air he answered that in ordinary Ponds it were not to be doubted but that in great Lakes he could not tell because the Fishermen use to break many great holes in the ice for the taking of the Fish For at each of these holes they thrust in a Net and all these Nets are drawn up together in one great breach made insome convenient place near the middle of the rest It appears then that the Tradition is general enough but whether it be well grounded I dare not determine either affirmatively or negatively till trial have been made in Ponds with more of design or of curiosity and watchfulness then I have known hitherto done men seeming to have acquiesc'd in the Tradition without examining it and to have been more careful not to omit what is generally believ'd necessary to the preservation of their Fish then to try whether they would escape without it Wherefore though for ought I know the Tradition may prove true yet to induce men not to think it certain till experience has duly convinc'd them of it I shall represent That as much as I have in other Treatises manifested how necessary Air is to Animals yet whether Fishes may not live either without Air or without any more of it then they may find interspers'd in the water they swim in has not yet that I know of been sufficiently prov'd For what we have attempted of that nature in our Pneumatical Engine whether it be satisfactory or not is not yet divulged And I remember not to have hitherto met with any writer except Olaus be construed to intimate so much that affirms upon his own observation that the want of breaking ice in Ponds has destroy'd all the Fish Besides that possibly in frozen Ponds there may be other reasons of the death of the Fishes that are kill'd if any store of them be so by very sharp frosts For who knows what the locking up of some kinds of subterraneal steams that are wont freely to ascend through water unfrozen may do to vitiate and infect the unventulated water and make it noxious to the Fishes that live in it perhaps also the excrementitious steams that insensibly issue out of the bodies of the Fishes themselves may by being penn'd up by the ice contribute in some cases to the vitiating of the water at least in reference to some sort of Fishes For being desirous to learn from a person curious of the ways of preserving and transporting Fish whether some Fishes would not quickly languish grow sick and sometimes dy out-right if the water they swam in were not often shifted he assur'd me that some kinds of them would and it has not yet that I hear of been tri'd whether or no though Ponds seldom freez to the bottom yet the water that remains under the ice in which it self some Fishes may be now and then intercepted may not even whilest it continues uncongeal'd admit a degree of cold that though not great enough to turn water into ice may yet be great enough when it continues very long to destroy Fishes though not immediately yet within a less space of time then that during which the surface of the Pond continues frozen But 't is not worth while to be sollicitous about conjectures of causes till we are sure of the Truth of the Phaenomenon and these things are propos'd not so much to confute the Tradition we have been speaking of as to bring it to a Trial which having no opportunity to make in Ponds I endeavour'd as well this Winter as formerly to obtain what information I could from Trials made in small vessels with the few Fishes I was able to procure And I shall subjoyn most of these Trials not because I think them very considerable but because they are for ought I know the only attempts of the kind that have yet been made To satisfie my self whether the ices denying
access to the Air was that which destroy'd Fishes in frozen Ponds I thought upon this Epedient I procur'd a glass vessel with a large belly and a long neck but so slender that it was only wide enough for the body of the Fishes to pass through and then having fill'd the vessel with some live Gudgeons and a good Quantity of water the neck of it was made to pass through a hole that was left or made for it in the midst of a metalline plate or wooden Trencher which could descend no lower then the neck because of the inferior part of the glass that would not suffer it and which serv'd to support a mixture of Ice or Snow and Salt which was appli'd round about the extant neck of the glass By this contrivance I propos'd to my self a double advantage the first that whereas in broad vessels 't is not always so easie as one would think to be sure that the surface of the water is quite frozen over in every part by this way I could easily satisfie my self by inverting the glass and observing that the ice had so exactly choak'd up and stopt the neck that no drop of water could get out not any bubble of Air get in and yet the Fishes had liberty enough to play in the subjacent water The other conveniency was that the frigorifick mixture being appli'd to the neck no water was congeal'd or extremely refrigerated but that which was contain'd in the neck so that there seem'd no cause to suspect that in case the Fishes thus debarr'd of Air should not be able to live in the water it was rather Cold then want of Air that kill'd them But though not having then been able by reason of a remove to prosecute these Trials to the utmost nor to register all the circumstances I shall not lay much weight upon it yet I remember that the included Fishes continued long enough alive to make me shrowdly suspect the Truth of the vulgar Tradition Another time being destitute of the conveniency of such glasses I caus'd some of the same kind of Fishes to be put into a broad and flat earthen vessel with not much more water then suffic'd perfectly to cover them and having expos'd them all night to a very intense degree of cold I found the next morning that some hours after day they were alive and seem'd not to have been much prejudiced by the cold or exclusion of Air. 'T is true that there was a very large moveable bubble under the ice but that seem'd to have been generated by the Air or some Analogous substance emitted out of the Gills or bodies of the Fishes themselves for that the surface of the water was exactly frozen over which does not in such Trials happen so often as one would think I found by being able to hold the vessel quite inverted without losing one drop of water And that this large bubble might possibly proceed from the Fishes themselves I was induc'd to suspect because having at different seasons of the year for divers purposes kept several sorts of Fishes and particularly Gudgeons for many days in glass vessels to satisfie my self about some Phaenomena I had a mind to observe I have often by watching them seen them lift up their mouthes above the surface of the water and seem to gape and take in Air and afterwards let go under water out of their mouthes and gills divers bubbles which seem'd to be portions of the Air they had taken in perhaps a little alter'd in their bodies And particularly in Lampries of which odd sort of Fishes I elsewhere make mention I have with pleasure both observ'd and show'd to ingenious men that being taken out of the water into the Air and then held under water again they very manifestly appear'd to squeez out and that not without some force at those several little holes which are commonly mistaken for their eyes numerous and conspicuous bubbles of Air which they seem'd to have taken in at their mouthes if not also at those holes But of these matters a fitter occasion may perhaps invite me to say more To return now to our Gudgeons I shall add that to satisfie my self further what cold and want of Air they may be brought to support I expos'd a couple of them in a bason to an exceeding bitter night and though the next day I found the ice frozen in the vessel to a great thickness and one of the Fishes frozen up in it there remaining a little water unfrozen the other Fish appear'd through the ice to move to and fro and the ice being afterwards partly thaw'd and partly broken not only that Fish was found lively enough but the other which I alone judg'd not to be quite dead though when the ice was broke it lay moveless did in a few minutes so far recover as to tow after it if I may so speak a good piece into which his tail remain'd yet inserted and though one of these and some other Gudgeons that had been already weakned by long keeping were once more expos'd in the Bason to the frost and suffer'd to lye there till they were frozen up yet the ice being broken in which they were inclos'd though their bodies were stiff and crooked and seem'd to be stark dead lying in the water with their bellies upwards yet one of them quickly recovered and the other not very long after began to show manifest signs of life though he could not in many hours after so far recover as to swim with his back upwards 'T is true that these Fishes did not long survive but of that two or three not improbable reasons might be given if it were worth while to name here any other then this that the ice they had been frozen up in or the violence that was offered them by the fragments of it when it was broken had wounded them as was manifest enough by some hurts that appear'd upon their bodies yet some other Gudgeons were irrecoverably frozen to death by being kept inclos'd in ice during if I misremember not the time three days And as for other Animals I caus'd a couple of Frogs to be artificially frozen in a wide mouth'd glass furnish'd with a convenient quantity of water but though they seem'd at first inclos'd in ice yet looking nearer I found that about each of them there remain'd a little turbid liquor unfrozen as if it had been kept so by some expirations from their bodies Wherefore causing either the same or two others for I do not punctually remember that circumstance to be carefully frozen and for a considerable while I found that notwithstanding the ice into which most part of the water was reduc'd not only one of them before the ice was broken appear'd to be perfectly alive but the other that was moveless and stiff and lying with the belly upwards in a Bason of cold water whereinto it was cast did in a very few minutes begin to swim about in it I
another Treatise to which such matters more properly belong 'T is known that the Schools define cold by the property they ascribe to it of congregating both Heterogeneous and Homogeneous things I thought it not amiss to attempt the making some separations in bodies by the force of Cold. For if that hold true in this climate which has been observ'd by Travellers and Navigators in Northern Regions that men may obtain from Beer and Wine a very strong spirit and a phlegme by congelation it seems probable that in divers other liquors the waterish part will begin to freez before the more spirituous and saline and if so we may be assisted to make divers separations as well by cold as by heat and dephlegme if I may so speak some liquors as well by congelation as by distillation but I doubt whether the ordinary frosts of this Countrey can produce a degree of cold great enough to make such divisions and separations in bodies as have been observ'd in the more Northern Climates For though having purposely hung out a glass-bottle with a quart of Beer in it in an extraordinarily sharp night I found the next morning that much the greatest part of the Beer being turn'd into ice there remain'd somewhat nearer the middle but nearer the bottom an uncongeal'd liquor which to me and others seem'd stronger then the Beer and was at least manifestly stronger then the thaw'd ice which made but a spiritless and as it were but a dead drink yet in some other Trials my success was not so considerable as some would have expected For having put one part of high rectifi'd spirit of Wine to about five or six parts if I misremember not of common water and having put them into a round glass and plac'd that in beaten ice and salt though the mixture were in great part turn'd into ice yet I could not perceive that even two liquors so slightly mingled were any thing accurately severed from one another although once to enable my self the better to judge of it the spirit of Wine I imploy'd was beforehand deeply tincted with Cochinele and therefore I the less wonder that in Claret Wine I could not make any exact separation of the red and the colourless parts However I thought it not amiss to try how far in some other liquors this way of separating the waterish and more easily congealable part from the rest would or would not succeed And I remember that a large glass vessel wherein spirit of Vinegre was exposed to the cold a considerable part was turned into ice whose swimming argued it to be lighter then the rest of the liquor but though I put some of this ice in a glass by it self to examine by its weight and taste when thaw'd how much it differ'd from the uncongeal'd part of the spirit my hopes were disappointed by a misfortune which was not repaired by my exposing afterwards a smaller quantity of spirit of Vinegre to the Nocturnal Air for that proved so cold that the whole was turned into ice wherefore I must reserve for another opportunity the prosecuting that Experiment as also the trying whether a separation of the Serous or the Oleaginous parts of Milk may be effected For though once the frost seem'd to have promoted a separation of Creme notwithstanding that heat also may do it and though another time there seem'd to be another kind of divulsion of parts made by congelation yet for want of leisure to prosecute such Trials they prov'd not satisfactory no more then did some attempts of the like nature that I made upon blood by freezing it But notwithstanding these discouragements I resolv'd to try what I could do upon Brine For calling to mind the Relations mentioned in the XV. Title and elsewhere which seem to argue that in some cases the ice of the sea-Sea-water may being thaw'd yield fresh water and being the more inclin'd to think it worth Trial by a Physician I since happened to discourse with about this matter who affirm'd to me that sailing along the coast of Germany he had taken out of the Sea ice that being thaw'd he found to afford good fresh water I began to consider whether we might not by cold free salt water at some seasons of the year from a great deal of the phlegme which 't is wont to cost much to free them from by fire and other means For a little help towards the diminution of the fresh water is look'd upon as so useful an Experiment by many that boil salt out of the salt springs that in some Countries that are thought the skilfullest in that trade they make their salt-water fall upon great bundles of small brush-wood that being thereby divided and reduc'd to a far greater superficies there may in falling through some of the purely Aqueous parts exhale away wherefore dissolving one part of common salt in 44. times its weight of common water that it might be reduc'd either exactly or near to the degree of saltness that has been by several writers observed in the water of our neighbouring Seas and having likewise caus'd another and much stronger Brine to be made by putting in to the water a far greater proportion of salt for so there is in many of our salt springs we expos'd these several solutions to the congealing cold of the Air in frosty weather where the last mention'd solution being too strongly impregnated with the salt continued some days and nights altogether uncongeal'd but that weaker solution which emulated Sea water being expos'd in a shallow and wide mouth'd vessel that shape being judg'd the most proper we could procure for our design the large superficies that was expos'd to the Air did as we expected afford us a cake of ice which being taken off and the rest of the liquor expos'd again to the Air in the same vessel we obtain'd a second cake of ice and taking the remaining which seem'd to be indispos'd enough to congelation we found that by comparing it with that which was afforded us by the first cake of ice permitted to thaw there appear'd a very manifest difference betwixt the water whereinto the ice was resolv'd scarce tasting so much as brackish whereas the liquor that had continued uncongeal'd was considerably salt in taste And if I had had the conveniency of examining my self these two liquors Hydrostatically as I was fain to have them examin'd by another I doubt not but by their weight I should have discovered precisely enough the difference between them which the person I employ'd found to be considerable and consequently should have been assisted to make an estimate of the advantage that might be afforded by the operation of the cold towards the freezing of the Brine from its superfluous water But though I had not a quantity of ice great enough to satisfie me whether that little brackishness of taste I have mention'd proceeded from some saline Corpuscles that concurr'd to the constituting of the ice it self or did only adhere
Horse-raddish and 〈◊〉 have been infused will not 〈◊〉 so soon as other stronger Beer without them Oranges and Limons frozen have a tough and hard rind their icy juices lose much of their genuine taste they were both frozen hard in 26. hours or a little more having a thick rinde They as other fruits when thawed soon become rotten and therefore the Fruiterers keeps them under ground in low Cellars and cover them with straw as they do their Apples Which did exposed in one night freez throughout If you cut one of them through the middle 't will have on both the plains a most pure thin ice hardly discernable by the eye but easily by the touch or by scraping it off with a knife The cores of these Apples soon turn brown and begin their corruption there Oyl exposed did acquire the consistency of butter melted and cool'd again but in Caves and Cellars I could never see it more then candy Strong White-wine Vinegre did all soon freez in a Tube and without any apparent bubbles And to conclude without mentioning Nuts Bread Butter Cheese Soap and many other things which came under my trial 't is most certain that whatsoever hath any waterish humidity in it is capable of congelation what are not you have in the next Paragraph Having now done with what will freez I shall briefly recount some things whereon the cold hath no such effect We mentioned before spirit of Wine add to it such strong waters as are made of it viz. Aqua Mariae Caelestis c. and Canary Wines in larger vessels Secondly the strong Lees of Soap-boylers and others made of other salts to which refer the spirits extracted from salt Vitriol Salt Petre Aquafortis and spirit of Sulphur which last precipitated to the bottom of the Tube a small quantity of powder very like in colour to Sulphur Vivum which being separated from the spirit for nothing of that evaporated cracked between my teeth and tasted like Brimstone and being put into water made it as white as Lac Sulphuris doth but 't would not flame perhaps because too much of its strong acid spirit was mixed with it Spirit of Soot afforded also a precipitation or sediment the spirit not congealing at the bottom of the Tube of a yellowish colour but much bitterer then the spirit its self and inflamable also But here 't is to be observed that the said spirits that would not freez alone yet with the mixture of about 12. parts of water or less of ice or snow did freez throughout except the spirits of Salt of Nitre and Aqua fortis which would not freez with those quantities of water ice and snow I intended to have tried them with a greater quantity of the said ingredients but the weather failed me Whether the salt water freez in the Sea I cannot experimentally determine but shall add what was told me by one that said he had dissolved ice in the Northern Seas and found it very salt The next proposed was the figure of liquors frozen wherein I shall observe in general that most of the liquors differed one from another in their figures and being permitted to freez and thaw often they still returned to the same figure most whereof were branched Alume appeared in lumps Salt Petre Tartar milk Ale Wine and Sal Armoniac in plates and other liquors mentioned to freez into a very soft ice seeming to be made up of small globuli adhering each to other Fair water kelp and the frits resembled an oaken leaf the leafie parts being taken away and the fibres only remaining the interstitia being fill'd up with smoother ice The middle rib if I may so say as in plants was much bigger then the lateral ones all which seemed but different 〈◊〉 whose points extended towards the outside of the vessel containing the water and made acute angles with the middle rib towards the lesser end of the said leaf Concerning the figures of frozen Urine I shall say nothing the accurate description of curious Mr. Hook having so fully and truly performed that part of my task Now as to the famous experiment of Quercetan and affirmed by many other Chymists I made experiments in these following Vegetables Rosemary Rue Scurvigrass Mints and Plantane wherewith I thus proceeded I mixed with ½ a pint of their distilled waters ½ or ¾ of an ounce of their own salts the Rosemary and Rue were calcined and their salts extracted with their own waters and then were added to their salts their own distill'd waters in the above mentioned proportions The glasses wherein the Rue and Plantane were put being seal'd with Hermes seal and the other glasses left open The effect was that neither of them shewed the least resemblance of the plants from which they were extracted neither figure nor shew of roots stalks branches nor leaves but only a lump or heap of small globuli much less of flour or seed Besides the kelp frozen hath many fibres which is made the most of it of Alga Marina whose leaf is long and smooth without fibres in it This one thing I cannot pretermit that the sented waters seemed upon their thawing to have acquired and advanced much in their sents and especially the Rosemary whose salt hath no smell and its water but little yet thawed they 〈◊〉 as strong almost as fresh leaves rubb'd and smelt too A large recipient was fill'd with water which being frozen throughout and the upper crust of the ice broken there appeared in the middle of it a multitude of thin laminae of ice some more some less wide from which proceeded stiriae or teeth pointing inwards and set at pretty equal distances so that the laminae and stiriae resembled very much so many combs placed in no order some lying directly others obliquely none transversly having intervals betwixt each of them betwixt some of them I could put my finger without breaking the points of the stiriae these combs were placed round about a cavity in the middle of the receiver sufficient to receive two of my fingers In a flask filled competently with water when 't was frozen there appeared throughout the ice infinite silver-coloured bubbles very like unto tailed hail-shot of several sizes the largest about ¼ of an inch long where thickest of the bigness of a great pins-head others much less in all dimensions The points of them all looked outwards and the bigger part inwards towards the Centre where also were the largest For there they would easily admit a little pin into all their cavity without the least resistence The figures of them were pretty regular first a small thread and then a head as big as a shot and thence gradually ended in a point Some of these were straight most a little crooked There was a cavity in the centre of this ice filled with unfrozen water from which I could find multitudes of cavities of bubbles not fully formed And in the more solid parts of the ice cut you may discern them
down in the slender Stem of a small Weather-glass then the spirit of Wine it self as we have elsewhere shown that when Air is not forc'd a Bubble of it will not in several cases so readily pass through a very narrow passage as would that grosser fluid Water But all these difficulties not to call them extravagances which I have been mentioning about seal'd Weather-glasses I represent not to show that it is at least as yet worth while to suspect ours so far as to imploy all the Diligence and Inventions that were 〈◊〉 to prevent or silence the suspicions of a Sceptick or that might be thought upon in case the matter did require or deserve such extraordinary Nicety but only to give men a rise to consider whether it would be amiss to take in when Occasion presents it self as many collateral Experiments and Observations as conveniently we can to be made use of as well as our Sensories and Weather-glasses in the Dijudications of Cold. And perhaps an Attentive Enquiry purposely made would discover to us several other Bodies Natural or Factitious which we might make some use of in estimating the degrees of Cold. For though to give an instance 〈◊〉 be thought the Liquor that is most susceptible of such an Intensity of Cold as will destroy or suspend its Fluidity yet not here to repeat what we formerly deliver'd of the easie congealableness of Oyl of Aniseeds we have as we elsewhere note to another purpose distill'd a substance from Benzoin which becomes of a fluid a consistent Body and may be reduc'd to the state of fluidity again by very much lesser alterations of the Ambient Air as to Heat and Cold then would have produc'd Ice or Thaw'd it I could also here take notice of what I have sometimes observ'd in Amber-greese dissolv'd in high rectifi'd spirit of Wine or in other Sulphurous or Resinous concretions dissolv'd in the same Liquor for now and then though it seem'd a mere Liquor in warm Weather it would in Cold weather let go part of what it swallow'd up and afterwards redissolve it upon the return of warm weather some of these concretions as I have seen in Excellent Amber-greese shooting into fine figur'd masses others being more rudely congeal'd And I might also add what I have observ'd in Chymical Liquors not unskilfully prepar'd out of Urine Harts-horn c. which would sometimes seem to be totally clear Spirits and at other times would suffer a greater or lesser proportion of Salt to Chrystallize at the Bottom according to the Mutations of the Weather in point of Cold and Heat Such kind of instances I say I could mention but I shall rather chuse to prosecute my Examples in that obviousest of Liquors Water and add that even That may afford us other Testimonies of the increased or lessen'd cold of the Air then that which it gives us in Common Weather-glasses For in some parts of France the Watermen observe that the Rivers will bear Boats heavier loaden in Winter then in Summer and I have upon inquiry been credibly inform'd that Seamen have observ'd their ships to draw less water upon the Coasts of frozen Regions where yet the Sea is wont to be less brackish then they do on our British Seas which argues that water is thicker and heavier in Winter then in Summer Nay I shall add that not only in differing Seasons of the Year but even at several times of the same day I have often observed the Coldness of the Air to be regularly enough so much greater at one time of the day then at another that a Glass bubble Hermetically seal'd and pois'd so as to be exactly of the same weight with its equal Bulk of Water as that Liquor was constituted at one time of the Day would about Noon when the warmth that the Summers Sun produc'd in the Air had somewhat rarifi'd the water and thereby made it bulk for bulk somewhat lighter then before the Bubble would sink to the Bottom of the water which for the better marking the Experiment I kept in a Glass-Tube but when at night the coolness of the Air had recondens'd the water and thereby made it heavier it began by little and little to buoy up the Bubble which usually by morning regain'd the Top of the Water and at other times of the day it not unfrequently happen'd that the Bubble continued swimming up and down betwixt the Top and the Bottom without reaching either of them sometimes staying so long in the same part of the Tube that it much surpriz'd divers of the Virtuosi themselves who thought the poising of a weight so nicely not only a very great difficulty as indeed it is but an insuperable one But of this Experiment I elsewhere say more and because about other Weather-glasses I have said so much already I think it may not be improper to Sum up my thoughts concerning the Criteria of Cold by representing the following particulars 1. That by reason of the various and unheeded predispositions of our Bodies the single and immediate informations of our senses are not always to be trusted 2. That though Common Weather-glasses are useful Instruments and the informations they give us are in most cases preferrable to those of our sense of touching in regard of their not being so subject to unheeded mutations yet ev'n these Instruments being subject to be wrought upon by the differing weights of the Atmosphaere as well as by Heat and Cold may upon that and perhaps some other accounts easily mis-inform us in several cases unless in such Cases we observe by other Instruments the present weight of the Atmosphaere 3. That the seal'd Weather-glasses we have been mentioning are so far preferrable to the Common ones as especially they not being obnoxious to the various pressure of the external Air that there seems no need in most cases to decline their reports or postpose Them to those of any other Instruments But yet in some nice Cases it may be prudent where it may conveniently be done to make use also of other ways of examining the Coldness of Bodies that the concurrence or variance to be met with in such ways of Examination may either confirm the Testimony of the Weather-glass or excite or assist us to a further and severer inquiry 4. That I would not have Men too easily deterr'd from devising and trying various Experiments if otherwise not unlikely or irrational about the estimating of Cold by their appearing disagreeable to the vulgar Notions about that Quality For I doubt our Theory of Cold is not only very imperfect but in great part ill grounded And I should never have ventur'd at trying to make seal'd Weather-glasses if I could have been withheld either by the grand Peripatetick Opinion that to shun a void water must remain suspended in Glasses where if it fall the Air cannot succeed it or the general opinion ev'n of Philosophers as well new as old That Air must be far easier then any visible Liquor
which more properly belongs to the Considerations about Heat where we have already handled it partly because our Design in the following Collections was not so much to gather and set down Observations that were obvious to any that was furnish'd with a Mediocrity of Attention as Experiments purposely made in order to the History of Cold and partly too because in this Collection though we do as occasion serves take notice of some Experiments and Phaenomena that relate to Cold in General or indefinitely yet our chief work has been to find out and deliver the Phaenomena of Congelation or of that intense Degree of Cold which either does freez the Bodies it works upon or at least were capable of turning common water fitly expos'd to it into Ice And this may serve for a general Advertisement about the ensuing Papers and consequently having premis'd it we shall without any further Preamble proceed to the setting down such things as we have tri'd and observ'd concerning those Matters beginning with those that belong to the Title prefix'd to the first Part or Section of our History 1. The Bodies that are cold enough to freez others are in this climate of ours but very few and among the most remarkable is a Mixture of Snow and Salt which though little known and less us'd here in England is in Italy and some other Regions much employ'd especially to cool Drinks and Fruits which men may easily do by burying in this mixture Glasses or other convenient vessels fill'd either solely with Wine or other Drinks or else with water that hath immersed in it the fruits to be refrigerated 2. The Circumstances we are wont to observe in making and employing this mixture we shall hereafter in due place deliver and therefore here we shall only take notice that we could not find upon some trials that such Glasses filled with water as would be frozen easily enough by this mixture of Snow and Salt would be in like manner frozen in case we employ'd Snow alone without mingling any Salt with it I deny not that 't is very possible that in very cold Countries as well Snow as beaten Ice may freez water powred into the Intervals of its Parts But there is great odds betwixt water so intermingled with Ice or Snow and only surrounded with it in a vessel where the water is as it were in one entire Body and of a comparatively considerable thickness And there is also a great Difference betwixt the degrees of coldness in 〈◊〉 Air of Frigid Regions and of England And perhaps too there may be some Disparity betwixt the Degrees of Coldness of Ice and Snow in those Climates and in ours And we must have a care that in case a Vial full of water buri'd all night should freez we ascribe not the Effect to the bare Operation of the Snow which may be entirely or in great Part due to the coldness of the Air which would perhaps have perform'd the Effect without the Snow 3. But though Snow and Salt mixt together will freez water better then Snow alone yet we must not think that there is any such peculiar vertue in Sea-salt to enable Snow to freez but that there are divers other Salts each of which concurring with Snow is capable of producing the like Effect For we found upon trial that we could freez water without the help of Sea salt by substituting in its place either Nitre or Alume or Vitriol or Sal Armoniack or even Sugar for either of those being mingled with a due proportion of Snow would serve the turn though they did not seem equally to advance the congealing power of the Snow nor scarce any of them did do it so well as Sea salt But of this elsewhere more 4. When we had made the newly mentioned trials some particular conjectures we have long had about the nature of Salts invited us to try whether uotwithstanding the comminution and consequent change produced in Salts by Distillation the Saline Corpuscles that abound in the distill'd liquors of those concretes as well as in their solutions would not likewise by being mixt with it enable Snow to freez water at least in small and slender Glasses This we first went about to try with good spirit of Salt but we found as we fear'd that though it made a sufficiently quick dissolution of the Snow it wrought upon yet its fluidity hindered it from being retain'd long enough by the Snow to the bottom of which it would fall before they had stay'd so long together as was requisite to freez so much as a little Essence-bottle full of common water 5. Wherefore we bethought our selves of an expedient whereby to try the operation not only of those spirits but of divers other bodies which were unapt for a Due commixture of Snow after the way newly mention'd or of which we had too little or valued them too much to be willing to spend quantities of them upon these trials And this way that remains to be mention'd we somewhat the better lik'd because the Experiments made according to it would also prove Experiments of the transmission of Cold through the extremely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Glass And even in this way of trying we did at first meet with a discouragement which least it should happen to others we shall here take notice of namely that having put a convenient quantity of Snow into a somewhat thick green glass Vial though we copiously 〈◊〉 mixt with it a somewhat weak spirit of salt being loath to imploy the best we had and having well stopt the vessel did carefully 〈◊〉 together and thereby agitate the mixture in it yet the Glass appeared only bedew'd upon the outside without having there any thing frozen But suspecting that the thickness of the Glass might be that which hindred the operation of the included mixture we put snow and a convenient proportion of the self same spirit of salt into a couple of thin Vials one of which we clos'd exactly and the other negligently and having long shaken them we found that what adhered to them on the outside was though but somewhat faintly and thinly frozen 6. And as to this sort of Experiments we shall here observe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all that the Snow or Ice included 〈◊〉 with the Saline Ingredient whatever that were was always thaw'd within the Glass and that consequently 't was the condens'd vapor of the Air or other liquor that adhered to the outside of the glass which was turn'd into Ice which is the Reason why in mentioning these Experiments we often use the word freez in a transitive sense to signifie the operation of the frigorifick mixture upon other bodies 7. This premised let us proceed to relate that we afterwards took Oyl of Vitriol and mixing it with Snow in such an other vial as that last mentioned we found its freezing power far greater then that of spirit of salt And least it should be pretended that in these Experiments the cold was not transmitted
of trials that we find among our notes concerning this matter In a single vial we seal'd up as much snow and salt as afterwards when melted we found to weigh between five and six ounces after a while the salt beginning to melt the snow the Dew on the outside began to congeal and being rubb'd off the hoar frost would quickly begin to come again This vial for further trial being put into a pair of scales with a counterpoise after a while as the vapours that wandred through the Air in the warm room hapned to be detain'd more and more upon the outside of the glass and to be there frozen the scale wherein the glass was began to be deprest and to shrink lower and lower after which by adding a little to the counterpoise we reduced them again to an Equilibrium And yet after a while the scale that held the vial subsided again more and more till the Included snow was melted so that to reduce the scales to their first Equilibrium we were fain to add in all to the Counterpoise a weight which we Estimated to be about eight or ten grains for we had then no great weights by us The vial being taken out there appeared near half a small spoonful of Liquor in the scale it stood in which proceded from the thaw of the Ice that was generated about it But in that part of the scale which was covered with the convex part of the bottom of the glass there appeared no wet A like or smaller quantity of snow and spirit of Wine being seal'd up in a single vial the outside quickly appeared cas'd with ice as high as the mixture reacht within and this vial also being counterpois'd in a pair of scales did by degrees depress the scale that held it till it had sunk it very low and about seven grains did but reduce the scales to an Equilibrium but the scales being somewhat rusty we could not make the Trials with that Exactness we desired 23. But at other times when the Experiment was more luckily though not more carefully tri'd with better scales the increase of weight from the condens'd vapours of the Air was somewhat more considerable for I find in a short note That at one time a mixture of spirit of Wine and Snow weighing three ounces and three quarters afforded of condens'd vapours about 18. grains And at another time a mixture of Snow and Sal Gem weighing three ounces and seventy grains procured us 〈◊〉 accession of water weighing about 20. grains Title II. Experiments and Observations touching Bodies Disposed to be Frozen 1. T Were almost endless to try particularly which bodies are or are not capable of congelation and the degree of cold would also in such Experiments be as near as men can determin'd because many bodies will freez in one degree of cold that will not in another wherefore we are willing to leave these trials to those that have more leisure and opportunity to prosecute them and shall only set down some and those somewhat various that we may not leave this part of the History of Cold quite unfurnish'd And we must mention the fewer because being in the Countrey we were not provided of divers of the bodies which we should have expos'd 2. In very cold snowy weather we tri'd that besides common water Urine Beer Ale Milk Vinegre and French and Rhenish Wine though these two Last but slowly were turned into ice either totally or in part But such instances will possibly be thought too obvious to be insisted on therefore I shall add That not only we froze a strong solution of Gum Arabick and another of white Sugar in common water but that We took Alume Vitriol Salt-Petre and Sea salt and made of each of them in a single vial as strong a solution as we could we also made a strong solution of Verdegrease in fair water which was thereby deeply coloured all these we exposed to the cold Air. The solution of Alume Nitre and Verdegrease froze without affording any notable Phaenomena either in the figuration of the Ice or otherwise Of the solution of Vitriol there remain'd at the bottom of the glass a pretty quantity unfrozen and of a clear substance whose colour was very high of the Vitriol whereas the upper part of the same solution differed very little in colour from common Ice 3. But because it seems not so strange that these gross sorts of Saline bodies should be turned into Ice we thought fit to try whether or no also divers salts freed from the grosser parts of their concretes by the fire were not likewise capable of congelation We exposed therefore spirit of Vinegre in one small glass and spirit of Urine in another to an intense cold and found that not only the former but the latter also froze 4. We took likewise some of the fiery lixiviate salt of Pot ashes and a single vial in which we put to two ounces of 〈◊〉 a drachm of the Alcaly and exposing it to a very sharp Air we did when we came to see the success of the trial find Ice lying on the top in little sticks something crossing one another almost like the Crystals of rocked Petre and besides these that lay levell'd there were others that shot downwards in very great numbers 5. We also found that Oyl of Tartar per deliquium or at least a strong solution of the fixt salt of Tartar though it seemed much to resist the 〈◊〉 yet it was once by snow and salt brought to Congelation Appendix to the II. Title SInce I wrote the present Book concerning Cold excepting some of the Appendices having once had the Opportunity of an Hours Discourse with an Ingenious Man that not only liv'd some years in Muscovy but was and is still Physician to the great Monarch of that Empire and having likewise at other times conversed with Navigators and some other credible persons that had travelled either to Greenland Terra Nova or other gelid Climates I propos'd them divers Questions by their Answers to which I learned some particulars which together with others that I have met with in Voyages and other Books I think it not amiss to annex by way of Appendices to the foregoing and some of the following Sections or Titles About the freezing of common express'd Oyls I know not well what to determine For that they may by a very intense Cold be depriv'd of their Fluidity and be made capable of being cut into portions that will retain the figure given them my own Trials invite me to believe but whether such oyls will be turned into true by which I mean hard and brittle Ice is a Question scarce to be determin'd by any Experiments we can make here in England where we could not reduce oyl Olive into Ice And for the Relations of those that have liv'd in colder Countries I find them to disagree For when I asked the lately mention'd Doctor the Question how far he had known oyl Congeal'd
to that we here employed obtain Ice And though in this metalline Sugar we may well suppose the Saline parts of the spirit of Vinegre to be much more concentrated or united then they were in the spirit yet the solution must abound with aqueous parts and this Sugar seeming but a kind of Vitriol of Lead 't is worth our Notice that its solution would not freez as well as that of common Vitriol though in this latter concrete the metal be corroded by a spirit which as far as can be judged by the Liquors afforded in distillation is very much sharper and stronger then spirit of Vinegre 5. We likewise tried to freez Quick silver and for that purpose provided a bubble that being blown with a Lamp was but thin and so flat that the sides almost touched and it held but a little Mercury and that by the figure of the Glass being reduced to a large surface with but very little depth or thickness it was far more exposed then if it had been in a ordinary round Bubble to the action of the cold but we could not at all freez this extravagant liquor though we tried it more then once and though the last time we exposed it in the same 〈◊〉 to the same degree of Cold wherewith we made one of the following Experiments that required a very Intense degree of that Quality And in another thin glass-Bubble we long exposed Quicksilver to an extraordinary sharp air but though the cold had some operation upon it not here necessary to be mention'd yet we could not find that it did at all bring it to freez wherefore I could wish that trial were made in Muscovy Greenland Charles Island or some other of the most 〈◊〉 Regions where the Effects of cold which here are upon Quicksilver but languid are the most considerable and sometimes stupendious 6. It is very remarkable that though not only the solutions of other gross salts but as we have seen divers more saline and spirituous liquors were brought by snow and salt to Congelation yet a brine made very strong of Common salt could not be brought to freez at all though we kept it exposed with the other saline solutions that did freez during a whole night that was exceeding sharp Which Experiment I also tried many years since to draw thence an Argument in favour of the Cartestan Hypothesis about cold which I shall not now consider but rather add that being desirous to try with what proportions of Sea salt and water the congelation of them might be effected I found I could freez some Sea water that had been brought up in a Barrel to that Monarch of the Virtuosi the King for the making of trials with it and that having in a single vial exposed to the Air in a very bitter night a solution consisting of twenty parts of water and one of salt which is double the proportion of salt to be commonly found in our Sea-water the next day we found a good part of the Liquor frozen the Ice swimming at the top in figures almost like Broom spreading from the surface of the water downwards And to add That upon the by we suffered the Ice of salt-water to thaw to try whether it would yield fresh water but it seemed not devoid of some Brackishness which whether or no it proceeded from some parts of the contiguous brine that adhered to the Ice I leave to further and exacter observations since I am credibly informed that in Amsterdam there are divers that use the thaw'd Ice of the Sea-water to brew their Beer with instead of common fresh water 3. And since I made that Experiment I find in the industrious Bartholinus's newly publish'd Book De Nivis usu a Confirmation of the probability of the Report I just now mention'd his words being these De Glacie ex marinâ aquâ certum est siresolvatur salsum saporem deposuisse quod etiam non ita pridem expertus est Cl. Jacobus Finckius Academiae nostrae senior Physices Professor benè meritus in glaciei frustis è portu nostro allatis Title IIII. Experiments and Observations touching the Degrees of Cold in several Bodies 1. AFter having treated of the Bodies that are the most capable of producing Cold and of those that are most dispos'd or indispos'd to receive it it would be Methodical to take notice of the Degrees of Cold to be met with in differing Bodies But though a work of this nature might somewhat conduce to the Discovery of Cold in general yet it is so laborious a Task and to be well perform'd requires so much more of Leisure and Conveniency then I am Master of that I must resign it to those that are better furnish'd with them which I the freelier do because the Experiments which at this Time make the principal part of our History being chiefly of the highest Degrees of Cold we may seem to have done something of what more 〈◊〉 concerns our present Design by having made the Experiments anon to be subjoyn'd within this present Section or Title And yet thus much we elsewhere do towards the framing of a Table of the Degrees of Cold that we do on other occasions set down those hitherto unpractis'd ways that we have imploy'd to estimate the greater or lesser Coldness of Bodies by several kinds of Weather-glasses differing from the common ones and far more fit then they for such a Purpose For by Hermetically seal'd Thermoscopes furnish'd with high rectifi'd spirit of Wine we can estimate the differing degrees of Coldness in Liquors of which we shall presently mention an Example And by using such Weather-glasses as have their Air included not at the top but at the bottom of the Instrument we can within some reasonable Latitude measure the Coldness both of intire solid Bodies or minuter Bodies as Salts c. by beating them alike and very small and placing the Instruments at equal Depths in the powder of each of them And besides that the shape of these Thermoscopes does as we have elsewhere shewn make them proper for these uses for which the vulgar ones where the included Air is at the top of the Instrument are not fit besides this I say 't is easie in these we make use of to make the Pipe so slender in proportion to the Cavity of the Vial whereinto 't is inserted that very much minuter Differences of Cold will be manifest in these then are wont to be sensible in common Weather-glasses And besides these two sorts we have elsewhere propos'd and describ'd a third and new kind of Thermometer wherein a drop of liquor being suspended in a very slender Pipe of Glass betwixt the outward and the inward Air makes it far more fit for those Experiments wherein we either despair or care not to measure the Difference of Cold betwixt two Bodies but are only desirous to try whether or no they differ in Coldness and in case they do which of them has most For
made much lighter by the heat of the ambient Air we might obtain the Information we desir'd to which we shall add That we also recommended to some Virtuosi that were likely to have the opportunity of gratifying Us that such an Experiment might be procured to be made in the midst of Summer in some part of Italy by the help of the there not unfrequent Conveniency of a Conservatory of snow wherein the water might be reduc'd to freez before the end of the same hour at whose beginning the there warmer Air had given it its greatest Expansion and so the Difference betwixt the Density of the same parcel of water might be the more conspicuous But as I have not received any Account of my Desires from abroad so coming now 〈◊〉 home to review the Memorial I caused to be written of the newly mention'd Observation I find that through the Negligence or Mistake of an Amanuensis there must needs be a manifest oversight committed in the 〈◊〉 down the Numbers which my Memory does not now enable me to repair And the season being now improper to repeat the Experiment as well as the numerical parcel of water I had kept and I imployed both times being thrown away I think it may be sufficient if not too much to have thus particularly intimated the way we took without ading the Cautions where with we proceeded nor what Trials we made to the same purpose with high rectifi'd spirit of Wine since unlucky accidents frustrated our Attempts 11. Whether the making of these kind of Trials with the waters of the particular Rivers or Seas men are to sail on may afford any useful estimate if and how much Ships and other Vessels may on those 〈◊〉 be safely loaden more in Winter 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 may be an 〈◊〉 of which I shall not in this place 〈◊〉 any 〈◊〉 Notice then to intimate thus much That the difference betwixt water highly refrigerated and that which is but of an usual degree of coldness is not so great as some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 seem to have thought For on a Day which though made cold by snow intermingled with the rain that then fell was not a frost we took common water and weighed in it a glass Bubble whose weight in the Air was 150. grains and this Bubble weigh'd in that water lost so much of its former weight as to weigh about 28 â… grains and then by snow and salt reducing that water to such a degree of Coldness that it began to be turned into Ice about the inside of a small open glass that contain'd it we found the same Bubble not to weigh at all above one eighth part of a grain less then it did before So that if we may judge of the shrinking and condensation of the water by the Increment of weight it shrunk but about a 230. part of its former Bulk and this according to a pair of scales that would turn with about the 32. part of a grain which may keep us from wondring at what we lately delivered concerning the very inconsiderable subsidence of the water we exposed to snow and salt in a small Bolthead And it may also make that the more probable which we not long since related about the oyl of Turpentines not losing much above a 100. part of its Bulk by being expos'd to such a degree of cold as made water begin to freez Whether we may from this and from the formerly recited Experiment of the great subsidence of spirit of Wine in a seal'd Weather-glass safely conclude these subtile distill'd Liquors to be much more sensible then water of Cold as well as of Heat further Trials will best resolve and these I have not now so much opportunity as I could wish to pursue 12. But they that have a mind to prosecute Experiments of this kind and others that relate to the Degrees of Cold may perchance be somewhat assisted even by these Relations and especially by those Passages that mention the use of the seal'd Weather-glass furnish'd with spirit of Wine and of those wherein a drop of liquor is kept pendulous For the former of these being not subject to the Alterations of the Atmospheres 〈◊〉 nor as may be probably suppos'd by reason of the strength of the high rectifi'd spirit of Wine to be frozen by sending the same Weather-glass which may be made portable enough as I have tried by transporting one of them in a Case that might be easily carri'd even in a Pocket from one Countrey to another one may make far better Discoveries of the differing Degrees of Coldness in differing Regions and know somewhat near how much the Air even of Muscovy or Norway or Greenland it self is colder then that of England or any other Countrey whence the Weather-glass shall be sent The Instrument being accompanied with a memorial of the Degree it stood at when expos'd to such a Cold as made water begin to freez 13. The other Thermometer where a drop of liquor is kept pendulous may not only be imploy'd in such cases where the Pipe and Bubble can be erected upon the Horizon but by reason that the outward Air will indifferently impel the Bubble laterally or upwards upon the Refrigeration of the inward and that the bubble will not barely by its weight drop out of the inverted Instrument because of the resistence of the subjacent outward Air for these causes I say such a Thermoscope may as we have tri'd be also us'd where the Pipe shall be held Horizontal or inclin'd or even Perpendicularly downwards so that the flat Part of the Bubble may be appli'd to discover the Coldness either of the Wall or of the Ceiling of a room or other Bodies however scituated And if the Pipe be made long and even as sometimes we imploy one above a foot long not only sensible but great Effects of very little Disparities in the Coldness of Bodies to which the Instrument is appli'd may with pleasure be observed And the same drop of liquor may be long enough preserv'd useful in the Pipe But this Advertisement I shall give that as sensible as this Instrument appears to be of the nicer Differences of Coldness as of Heat yet they that shall have the Curiosity to examine with it as I have done the Temperature I say not of more resembling Bodies but of Liquors that may be thought to have their parts so differingly agitated as common Water high rectifi'd spirit of Wine and even rectifi'd oyl of Turpentine I add not Dephlegm'd oyl of Vitriol because of some odd Phaenomena not here to be insisted on will perhaps find the Event so little in many cases answer the Expectation he would have had of uniformly finding great Disparities in their actual Coldness if he had not met with this Advertisement that he will not much wonder that a Person who wants not other Imployments for his Time was willing to decline so tedious and nice a Task Title V. Experiments touching the Tendency of Cold Upwards
to be measured so the measurers not knowing how long they may have been on ground for ought I know much of that admir'd height may be attributed to the snows that from time to time fall very plentifully in those frozen Regions and are compacted together either by the Sun whose Beams sometimes begin to thaw it and sometimes by the water of the waves that beat against the Ice and being congeal'd with the snow does as it were cement the parts of it together and sometimes by both of these causes So in the instance alledg'd out of Captain James of pieces of ice that were twice as high as his Top-mast-head it is said also that they were on ground in 40. fathome And in the other Example mention'd out of Bartholinus though there be 40. fathome attributed to the immersed part of the ice yet that measure is not exclusive of a greater for it is said that the ice reach'd downwards above 40. fathome and how much downwards and whether as far as the ground we are left at liberty to guess And in that stupendious piece of Ice recorded in the Nova Zembla voyage to have been in all 52. fathome that is 300. and twelve foot deep though it be granted what they affirm that it was 16. fathome above the water which is almost a third part of the whole depth yet I observe that of this Icy mountain it is said that it lay fast on the ground So that as on the one side it seems probable that the upper part of Islands of ice may be increas'd by snow and as I remember that in that famously inquisitive Navigator Mr. Hudsons voyage for the discovery of the North-west passage 't is related that his company was so well acquainted with the Ice that when Night or foggy or foul weather took them they would seek out the Broadest Islands of Ice and there come to Anchor and run and sport and fill water that stood the Ice in ponds very fresh and good So on the other side we know not how much lower the Dutch-mens Ice and Captain James's would have reach'd into the Sea in case the ground they rested on had not hindred them For though one might probably think that these are the greatest depths that any Hills of Ice have been observ'd to attain that mention'd by the Hollanders reaching 36. fathome beneath the water and that mention'd by Captain James no less then 40. fathome yet I find in Mr. Hudsons Voyage that the English in the Bay that bears his Name met with more then one or two Islands of Ice of a fargreater depth underwater For among other things the Relator has this memorable passage In this Bay where we were thus troubled with Ice we saw many of those mountains of Ice a ground in six or seven score fathome water And if the Sea had been deep enough even these stupendious moles of Ice would probably have sunk much lower and so have lessened the heights of the mountains 11. I know that delivering the measure of the Expansion of water alone I have not said all that may be said about the Expansion of Liquors But because as it has not yet appeared to me that any Liquor is expanded by Cold unless by actual freezing I doubted whether Aqueous Liquors as Wine Milk Urine c. were otherwise expanded by congelation then upon the Account of the water or phlegmatick and in a strict sense congealable part contain'd in them and whether it were worth while for a man in haste to examine their particular Expansions Notwithstanding which I would not discourage any from trying whether or no by the differing Dilatations of Aqueous Liquors some of them of the same and some of them of differing kinds we may be assisted to make any estimate of the differing proportions they contain of phlegm and of more spirituous or useful Ingredients 12. After what has been hitherto delivered concerning the Expansion of Liquors by Cold it may be expected we should say something of the measure of their Contraction by the same Quality But as for water which is the principal Liquor whose Dimensions are to be consider'd I have formerly declar'd that I could seldom or never find its contraction in the Winter season when I tried it to be at all considerable And I shall now add that having for greater certainty procur'd the Experiment to be made by another also in a Bolthead the Account I received of it was that he could scarce discern the water in the stem to fall beneath its station mark'd at the upper part of the pipe when the water in the Ball was so far infrigidated as to begin to freez Though I will not deny that in warmer Climates as Italy or Spain the contraction of the water a little before glaciation begins may be somewhat considerable especially if the Experiment be made in Summer or in case either there or here the water expos'd to freez be put into a vessel very advantageously shap'd or brought out of some warm Chamber or other place where the heat of the Air that surrounded it had rarifi'd it But to examine the measures of Contraction in the several Liquors and with the nice Observations that such a work to be accurately prosecured would require would have taken up much more of my time then I was willing to imploy about a work which I look'd not on as important enough to deserve it And therefore I shall here add nothing to what I have said under the Title of the Degrees of Cold touching the contraction of spirit of Wine and of oyl of Turpentine by the differing degrees of that Quality And as for the condensation of Air the vastest fluid we deal with I did indeed think fit to measure how much Cold condenses it But the account of that Experiment will be more opportunely deliver'd in one of the following Discourses Title XI Experiments touching the Expansive Force of Freezing Water 1. HAving shewn that there is an Expansion made of water and Aqueous Bodies by Congelation let us now examine how strong this Expansion is and the rather because no body has yet that we know of made any particular trials on purpose to make discoveries in this matter so that although some unhappy Accidents have kept our Experiments from being as accurate as we designed and as God assisting we may hereafter make them yet at least we shall shew this Expansion to be more forcible then has hitherto been commonly taken notice of and assist men to make a somewhat less uncertain Estimate of the force of it then they seem to have yet endeavoured to enable themselves to make 2. And 1. we shall mention some Experiments that do in general shew that the Expansion of freezing water is considerably strong We took a new Pewter-bottle capable to contain as we guess'd about half a pint of water and having fill'd it top full with that Liquor we scru'd on the stopple and exposed it during
he inform'd me that it was their usual way to turn water and snow into ice by pouring a convenient Proportion of that liquor into a great quantity of snow and having also inquir'd 〈◊〉 ice had not the like operation he told 〈◊〉 that t was usual and he had seen it practis'd in 〈◊〉 to cement Ice to Buildings and other things and also to case over Bodies as it were with Ice by gradually throwing water upon them But I doubt whether that Effect be to be ascrib'd barely to the Contiguity of the Ice because I learn'd of him that this way of increasing ice is practis'd in very frosty weather when water thinly spread upon almost any other Body would be frozen by the vehement sharpness of the Air. 7. The Glaciations that nature unguided by Art is wont to make beginning at those parts of Bodies at which they are expos'd to the Air it usually happens that they freez from the upper towards the lower parts But how far in Earth and Water the most considerable Bodies that are subject to be frozen the frost will pierce downwards though for some hints it would afford worth the knowing is not easie to be defin'd because the deepness of the frost may be much varied by the degree of Coldness in the Air by which the Glaciation seems to be produc'd as also by the greater or 〈◊〉 Duration of the frost by the looser or closer texture of the Earth by the nature of the Juices wherewith the Earth is imbu'd and by the constitution of the subjacent and more internal parts of the Earth some of which send up either actually warm or potentially hot and resolving steams such as those that make corrosive liquors in the bowels of the Earth so that the frost will not seiz upon or at least cannot continue over Mines and I have seen good large scopes of land where vast quantities of good Lime-stone lay near the surface of the Earth on which I have been assur'd by the Inhabitants that the snow will not lye There are divers other things that may vary the depth to which the frost can penetrate into the ground I say into the ground because in most cases it will pierce deeper into the water But yet that we may not leave this part of the History of Cold altogether uncontributed to we will add some of our Notes whereby it will appear that in our Climate the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 less into the ground then many are pleas'd to think 8. The notes I find about this matter are these that follow which I 〈◊〉 unaltered because 't were tedious and not worth while to add the way we imploy'd and the cautions we us'd in making the observations but we shall rather intimate that the following trials were made in a Village about two miles from a great City I. Jan. 22. After four nights of frost that was taken notice of for very hard we went into an Orchard where the ground was level and not covered with grass and found by digging that the frost had scarce pierc'd into the ground three inches and a half And in a Garden nearer the house we found not the Earth to be frozen more then two inches beneath its surface II. Nine or ten nights successive frost froze the grasless ground in the Garden about six inches and a half or better in depth and the grasless ground in the Orchard where a wall 〈◊〉 it from the south Sun to the 〈◊〉 of about eight inches and a half or better February the 9. we digg'd in an Orchard near a wall that respects the North and found the frost to have 〈◊〉 the ground 〈◊〉 a foot and two inches at least above a foot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the eight day since it was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inches and a half A slender pipe of glass about 18. inches long and seal'd at one end was thrust over night into a hole purposely made with a Spit straight down into the ground the 〈◊〉 of the water being in the same level with that of the Earth the next morning the Tube being taken out the water appear'd frozen in the whole Capacity of the Cylinder but a little more then three inches But from this stick of ice there reach'd downwards a part of a Cylinder of ice of about six inches in length the rest of the water remain'd 〈◊〉 though it were an exceeding sharp night preceded by a Constitution of the Air that had been very lasting and very bitter The Earth in the Garden where this Trial was made we guess'd to be frozen eight or ten inches deep as it was in another place about the same house But is this Tube had not been in the ground the ambient Air would have frozen it quite through 9. Another Note much of the same import we find in another place of our Collections Finding that by reason of the mildness of our Climate I was scarce to hope for any much deeper Congelation of the Earth or Water I appli'd my self to inquire of an Ingenious Man that had been at Musco whether he had observed any thing there to my present purpose as also to find in Captain James's Voyage whether that inquisitive Navigator had taken notice of any thing that might inform me how far the Cold was able to freeze the Earth or Water in the Island of Charleton where that Quality may probably be supposed to have had as large a sphere of Activity as in almost any part of the habitable world And by my Inquiries I 〈◊〉 that even in frozen Regions themselves a congealing degree of Cold pierces nothing near so deep into the Earth and Sea as one would imagine For the Traveller I spoke with told me that in a Garden in Musco where he took notice of the thing I inquir'd about he found not the ground to be frozen much above two foot deep And in Captain James's Journal the most that I find and that too where he gives an Account of the prodigiously tall ice they had in January concerning the piercing of the frost into the ground is this that The ground at tenfoot deep was frozen Whence by the way we may gather how much sharper Cold may be presum'd to have reigned in that Island then even in Russia And as for the freezing of the water He does in another place occasionally give us this memorable Account of it where He relates the manner of the breaking up the Ice in the frozen Sea that surrounds the Island we have been speaking of It is first to be noted says he that it doth not freez naturally above six foot the rest is by accident such is that Ice that you may see here six fathome thick This we had manifest proof of by our digging the Ice out of the Ship and by digging to our Anchors before the Ice broke up The rest of that account not concerning our present purpose I forbear to annex only taking notice that notwithstanding our lately mention'd Experiment of freezing water in
common salt but the Experiment succeeded not well though once we brought the ice to stick to the wood manifestly but not strongly 8. To this we shall add the following Experiment which when we watchfully made it succeeded well and I find it among my notes set down in these terms Solid fragments of ice having pretty store of salt thrown on them upon the first falling of the salt among the ice there was produced a little 〈◊〉 noise and for a good while after there manifestly ascended out of several parts of the mixture conveniently held betwixt a candle and the eye a steam or smoak like that of warm meat though the night were rainy and warm and though the morning had not been frosty The mention here made of the crackling noise made by the ice upon the addition of salt which seemed to proceed from the crackling of the brittle ice produc'd by the operation of the salt upon it brings into my mind an Experiment I had formerly made whereof a greater noise of the same kind is a Phaenomenon though the Experiment were chiefly made for the Discovery of the texture of Ice The event of the trial I find thus set down among my notes 9. We took some cakes of ice each of the thickness between an 〈◊〉 and a ¼ part of an inch but not so very compact ice as to be free from store of bubbles some good Aqua fortis dropp'd upon this did quickly penetrate it with a noise that seem'd to be the cracking of the ice underneath which the sowre liquor was very plainly to be tasted Oyl of Vitriol did the same but much more powerfully and without seeming to crack the ice which it past through so that though but three or four drops were let fall upon the plate it immediately shew'd it self in drops exceedingly corrosive on the other side of the ice And the like success we had with a trial made with the same liquor upon three such plates of ice frozen one upon the top of another 10. Having proceeded as far as we were able towards the bringing the strength of ice to some kind of Estimate by such Experiments as we had opportunity to make here we thought it not amiss to seek what information we could get about this matter among the Descriptions that are given us of Cold Regions But I have not yet found any thing to have been taken notice of to this purpose worth transcribing except a passage in the Arch-Bishop of upsal wherein though the estimate of the force of Ice be as we shall by and by show 〈◊〉 after a gross manner yet since this it self is more then I have met with elsewhere I think it worth subjoyning as our Author delivers it in these terms Glacies says he primae mediae hyemis adeò fortis tenax est ut spissitudine seu densitate duorum digitorum sufferat hominem Ambulantem trium vero digitorum equestrem Armatum unius palmae dimidiae turmas vel exercitus militares trium vel quatuor palmarum integram Legionem seu myriadem populorum quemadmodum inferiùs de bellis Hyemalibus memorandum erit But though this be sufficient to afford us an illustrious Testimony of the wonderful strong cohesion of the parts of ice yet we mention'd it but as a popular way of estimate which may better embolden Travellers then satisfie Philosophers in regard that the Author determines only the thickness of the ice and not the distance of that part of it that supports the weight from the shore or brink on which as on a Hypomochlion the remotest part of the ice does lean or rest And if we consider the ice as a Lever and the Brink or Brinks on which it is supported as a single or double sulcrum the distance of the weight may be of very great moment in reference to its pressure or gravitation on the ice which may much more easily support the weight of divers men plac'd very near the prop then that of one man plac'd at a great distance from it as will be easily granted by those that are not strangers to the Mechanicks especially to the nature and properties of the several kinds of Levers But not now to debate whether in certain cases the ice we speak of may not receive some support from the subjacent water nor whether some other circumstances may not sometimes be able to alter the case a little our very considering the ice as a single or double Lever though it may hinder us from measuring the determinate strength of ice upon Olaus's Observation yet it will set forth the strength of it so much the more since by his indefinite expressions he seems sufficiently to intimate that when the ice has attain'd such a thickness its resistance is equivalent to such a weight without examining on what part of the ice it chances to be placed 11. Thus far our Experiments concerning ice with the Appendix subjoyned out of Olaus to the same purpose We will now proceed to some of the observations we have met with in Seamens Journals and elsewhere I say to some because to enumerate them all would spend more time and labour then I can afford and therefore I shall restrain my self to the mention of some few of the chiefest I. And in the first place for confirmation of what I deliver'd at the beginning of this Section from the report of a Traveller into Russia touching the hardness of ice in those gelid Climates in comparison of our ice which I have found it easie to scrape with glass or to cut with a knife I shall subjoyn this passage of Captain G. Weymouth in his Voyage for the Discovery of the Northwest passage As we were says he breaking off some of this Ice which was very painful for us to do for it was almost as hard as a rock c. II. Next to shew that it was not a superfluous wariness that made me in a former Section doubt that even the ice made of sea-Sea-water might be altogether or almost insipid I will subjoyn that I have since met with some Relations that seem to justifie what is there deliver'd And in one of our Englishmens Voyages into the Northern Seas I find more then one instance to my present purpose though I shall here set down but one which is so full and express that it needs no companions Our Navigator speaking thus About nine of the Clock in the forenoon we came by a great Island of Ice and by this Island we found some pieces of Ice broken off from the said Island and being in great want of fresh water we hoysed out our Boats of both Ships and loaded them twice with Ice which made us very good fresh water But all this notwithstanding I yet retain some scruple till those that have better opportunity to make a more satisfactory Experiment shall ease me of it For though by these Narratives it seems more then probable that the ice
in the midst of the Sea consists but of the fresh Particles of water that plentifully concur to compose the Sea water yet besides that in case the fresh water were taken as some of that I have found mentioned in Voyages has confessedly been from the top of the ice it might possibly be no more then melted snow which as we elsewhere take notice does in those extremely cold Regions easily freez upon the ice it falls on and oftentimes much increases the height of it Besides this I say the Argument from the insipidness of the resolved ice will conclude but upon supposition that as that ice was found in the Sea so it was also made of the Sea water which though it may have been yet I somewhat doubt whether it were or no since I find some Navigators of the most conversant in the cold Climates to inform us That most of those vast Quantities of ice that are to be met with about Nova Zembla and the strait of Weigats and that choke up some other passages whereby men have attempted to pass into the south Sea are compos'd of the accumulation of numerous pieces of ice cemented together by cold water that are brought down from the great River Oby and others so that it may very well be suppos'd that these mountainous pieces of ice may be some of these which upon the shattering of ice in Bays and straits partly by the heat of the Sun and partly by the Tides may be afterwards by the winds and currents driven all up and down the Seas to parts very distant from the shore and some of these it may be that our Countreymen met with and obtain'd their fresh water from Which I the rather incline to think because that as we shall have occasion to observe in another Section the main Sea it self is seldom or never frozen But my scope in all this is but to propose a scruple not an opinion III. The next and principal thing concerning ice is the bigness of it which I find by the Relations partly of some Acquaintances of my own and partly of some Navigators into the North to be sometimes not only prodigious but now and then scarce credible And therefore as I shall mention but few instances that I have selected out of the best Journals and other writings I have met with so I shall add a few more Testimonies to keep them by their mutual support from being entertain'd with a Disbelief which their strangeness would else tempt men to Of the vastness of single mountains of ice the most stupendious Example that for ought I know is to be met with in any language but ours is that which I formerly took notice of out of the Dutch Voyage to Nova Zembla which was ninty six foot high that is above twenty foot higher than on a certain occasion I found the Leads of Westminster Abbey to be But 't is probable that our Captain James met with as great if not greater For though in some places he mentions divers hills of Ice that were aground in 40. fathom water and consequently were as deep under water as that newly taken notice of out of the Hollanders And though he elsewhere mentions other pieces of no less depth and twice as high as his top-Mast head and this in June yet elsewhere and long after relating his return home he has this passage We have sail'd through much mountainous Ice far higher then our Top-Mast head But this day we sail'd by the highest that I ever yet saw which was incredible indeed to be related But the stupendiousest piece for heighth and depth of single Ice that perhaps has been ever observ'd and measur'd by men is that which our Famous English Seaman Mr. W. Baffin whose name is to be met with in many modern Maps and Globes mentions himself to have met with upon the coast of Greenland whose whole Relation I shall therefore subjoyn not only because of the stupendiousness of this piece of ice but because he takes notice of an observation which I knew not to have been made by any and comes somewhat near the estimate we formerly made of the proportion betwixt the extant and immers'd parts of floating ice only the following Estimate makes the extant part somewhat greater then we did which may easily proceed from other mens having as Mr. Baffin here does grounded their computation upon what occurr'd to them at Sea or in salt water where the ice must sink less then in fresh water such as my Estimate suppos'd Our Navigators words then are these The 17. of May we sail'd by many great Islands of Ice some of which were above 200. foot high above water as I prov'd by one shortly after which I fonnd to be 240. foot high and if the report of some men be true which affirms that there is but one seventh part of Ice above water then the height of that piece of Ice which I observed was one hundred and forty fathoms or one thousand six hundred and eighty foot from the top to the bottom This proportion I know doth hold in much Ice but whether it do so in all I know not Thus far of the height and depth of single pieces of ice as for the other Dimensions the length and breadth I remember not that I have read of any that had the Curiosity to measure the extent of any of them excepting Captain James whose Ship being once arrested between some flat and extraordinary large pieces of ice he and his men went out to walk upon them and he took the pains to measure some of the pieces which he says he found to be a 1000. of his paces long And probably among so many mountains and Islands of ice there would have been found some intire pieces of a greater extent then even these if men had had the curiosity to measure them Hitherto we have treated of the bigness of single pieces of ice we will now proceed to say something of the dimensions of the aggregates of many of them among which having selected four or five as the principal I remember my self to have yet met with I presume it will be sufficient to subjoyn them only About ten of the clock we met with a mighty bank of ice being by supposition seven or eight leagues or twenty four miles long says that experienced English Pilot James Hall in his Voyage of Denmark for the discovery of Greenland Another of our English Navigators mentions that even in June all the Sea wherein he was indeavouring to sail as far as he could see from the top of a high hill was covered with ice saving that within a quarter of a mile of the shore it was clear round about once in a Tide By which last clause it seems that this vast extent of ice was either one intire floating Island or at least a vast bank or rand as some Seamen term it of ice But the strangest account of banks of ice that
as our Author was descending into the golden Mine at Cremnitz he found in one place the heat to increase as he descended more and more which seems not to agree with a passage we lately mention'd out of him and to exceed any he had met with in any other Mine and afterwards the overseer bringing him into a room that abounded with smaragdine Vitriol the Mineral whence this heat proceeded though the room were spacious he found there besides a sharp spirit very offensive to his throat so troublesome a heat that he was ready to faint away with sweating and very much wondered how the diggers were able to work there And elsewhere the Author himself notes that such hot Mines of Vitriol or Sulphur may be found even in the first region of the earth as he calls that which is somewhat near the surface and which he thinks 〈◊〉 to name the cold region and within a large sphere of activity make it perpetually hot But this as I was intimating I mention but as a suspicion or a conjecture and notwithstanding that the degree of heat may be much increased in these Mines by the concurrance of accidental causes in case the conjecture be admitted yet since the frequency of a sensible degree of heat in very deep places does very little favour their opinion that will allow the earth to have no other heat but what it receives from the Sun beams or by the manifest fire of burning hills as Aetna and Vesuvius And if it should be objected that this Subterraneal heat is adventitious to the Earth which is supremely cold of its own nature Gassendus might reply that 't is as likely that the coldness of it near the superficies may be adventitious too and that it appears at least as manifestly that the one proceeds from the contiguous Air as it does that the other proceeds from some included fire and if I misremember not he hath this consideration that 't is somewhat strange that Nature should have intended the Earth for its summum frigidum and yet that a great part and for ought we know the greatest should be constantly kept warm either by the Sun as under the Torrid Zone or by the Subterraneal fires But the objection mention'd against Gassendus opposes but one of the Arguments we have alledg'd against the Earths being the primum frigidum and would leave the others in their force though it did more convincingly answer that against which 't is framed then it seems to do 10. And if the Patrons of the Earths coldness to evade the Arguments I have alledged should pretend that when they affirm the Earth to be the primum frigidum they mean not the Elementary Earth but some Body that is mingled with it I shall desire to know which 't is they mean of the many other Bodies that make up the Terrestrial Globe that we may examine what right it has to that Title and in the mean time I shall conclude against them that the Earth it self has none since they grant a colder Body then it and such a one as the earth must be beholding to for the greatest degrees of coldness it chances to possess 11. But though I presume enough has been said to make it appear unlikely that the Earth should be the primum frigidum yet I must in this dissent from the learned Gassendus that he thinks the Earth not only not to be the primum frigidum but not to be naturally cold any more then hot For the insensible parts of the Earth like those of other firm Bodies being heavy and perhaps gross and either having no constant motion at all or at least a far more remiss agitation then that of our Sensories it seems to follow that the Earth must seem cold to us unless it be by the communicated heat or motion of some extrinsick Agent put into a degree of agitation that belongs not to its nature and for the like reason I think it not improbable that pure Earth should in its own Nature be colder then either pure Water or pure Air since the Earth being a consistent Body its component particles are at rest among themselves or at least mov'd with an almost infinite slowness whereas Water and Air being fluids their component particles must be in a restless and various motion and consequently be less remote from heat which is a state wherein the various agitation of the minute particles is more vehement 12. And if those that plead for the Earth had declar'd that they meant not the pure or Elementary Earth but that part of the Terrestrial Globe that is distinct from the Sea and other Waters that make it up and would have Earth in that sense not to be the primum frigidum but only the summum frigidum perhaps they might have a better plea for their Opinion then they can urge for theirs who contend for the Water or the Air especially if to countenance their Opinion this memorable observation be added which I have met with among those Navigators that have had the greatest Experience of the Frigid Zone for the Dutch that sail'd thrice to Nova 〈◊〉 and once wintered there affirm in their first voyage that the highest degrees of Cold are not to be met with in the main Sea where yet men are most expos'd to the Operations of the Air and of the Water but either upon the Land or near it That accurate Geometrician and Hydrographer Fournier tells us that in 1595. the Hollanders being intercepted by Icy Scholes in the strait of Weigats and meeting with certain Muscovites demanded of them whether those Seas were always frozen and were answered that neither the Northern Sea nor that of Tartary did ever freez and that 't was only that strait with the Sea contiguous to the shores of some Bays and Gulphs that were frozen and our judicious Author not only adds that in effect all those that sail into those parts relate That all those Lumps of Ice are such as have been loosened and severed from the Islands and the Rivers of the Samojeds and Tartars but adventures to affirm in general terms that 't is certain the main Seas never freez and that 't is but the confines and shores of some of them that are frozen 13. That the water is the primum frigidum the Opinion of Aristotle has made it to be that of the schools and of the generality of Philosophers But I can as little acquiesce in this opinion as in the former not finding it agreeable to what experience teaches us 14. For not to mention that it would be very difficult to prove that divers very cold Bodies as Gold and Silver and Crystal and several other fusible stones have in them any water at all to which their coldness may with any degree of probability be ascribed nor to urge the Arguments that some Modern contenders for the supreme coldness of the Air are wont to imploy not I say to insist on such things
I shall content my self to make use of this obvious 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Cold that in Rivers Ponds and other receptacles of water the congelation begins at the Top where the liquor is expos'd to the immediate contact of the Air which sufficiently argues that the Air is colder then the Water since it is able not only sensibly to refrigerate it but to deprive it of its fluidity and congeal it into Ice whereas if the water it self were the primum frigidum either it ought to be at least as to the major part of it always congeal'd or we may justly demand a reason why when it does freez the glaciation should not begin in the middle or at the bottom as soon as at the Top if not sooner And our Arguments against the precedency of the water in point of coldness may be strengthen'd by this That frosts are wont to be hardest when the Air is very clear and freest from Aqueous vapors whereas in rainy weather wherein such vapors most abound the cold is wont to be far more remiss To which we may add what we lately deliver'd from the observation of Navigators that even in the frigid Zone the main Sea where yet the water is in the greatest mass and so most likely as well as advantag'd to disclose its nature never freezes though the Straits and Bays and Gulphs be frozen over which argues that the greatest degrees of Cold are rather to be assign'd to the Air or to the Earth then to the Water which by the practise formerly mention'd of the Masters of the French Salt Marshes appears to be when it is of a considerable depth fitter to preserve Bodies from congelation then to congeal them which instance I the rather repeat because it seems to argue that the water is not so much as dispos'd to receive any very intense degree of cold at a remote distance from the Air for though Navigators tell us of exceeding thick pieces of Ice yet as we have already elsewhere noted we are not bound to believe that the congealing cold has pierced any thing near so much as that thickness amounts to from the superficies of the Sea directly downwards for though it were no great matter if it did in comparison of that depth of the Sea which though the water be naturally cold the sharpest Air is unable to congeal yet we have elsewhere proved that those thick masses of Ice are not solid and intire pieces but rather heaps of many 〈◊〉 and other fragments of Ice which running upon one another or sliding under one another are by the congelation of the intercepted water and perchance half thaw'd snow as it were cemented together into mis-shapen and unweildy masses which conjecture agrees very well with that observation of the Ingenious Captain James which he delivers in these words It seldom rains after the middle of September but snows and that snow will not melt on the lands nor sands At low water when it snows which it doth very often the sands are all covered over with it which the half tide carries 〈◊〉 ously twice in twenty four hours into the great Bay which is the common Rendezvous of it Every low water are the sands left clear to gather more to the increase of it Thus doth it dayly gather in this manner till the latter end of Octob. and by that time hath it brought the Sea to that coldness that as it snows the snow will lye upon the water in flakes without changing its colour but with the wind is wrought together and as the Winter goes forward it begins to freez on the surface of it two or three inches or more in one night which being carried with the half tide meets with some obstacle as it soon doth and then it crumples and so runs upon it self that in few hours it will be five or six foot thick the half tide still flowing carries it so fast away that by December it is grown to an infinite multiplication of Ice Thus far this Navigator to which I shall add another passage out of one of his Countreymen Mr. Hudson famous for the Northern Discoveries that bare his name by which added to what has been elsewhere deliver'd to the same purpose we may be invited to believe that the vast Hills and Islands of Ice that are to be met with about the Straits of Weigats and elsewhere are not generated of the Sea it self It s no marvel says he that there is so much Ice in the Sea towards the Pole so many Sounds and Rivers being in the Lands of Nova Zembla and Newland to ingender it besides the coasts of Pechora Russia and Greenland with Lappia as by proof I find by my Travel in these parts 15. But for all this I think not fit as does the Ingenious Gassendus and some others to make the water indifferent as to heat and cold For as I formerly noted concerning the Earth so I must now represent touching the water that setting aside the 〈◊〉 of the Sun which is but adventitious where it does operate and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many vast portions of that Element which it 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 reach the insensible parts of water are much less agitated then those of our Sensories temperately dispos'd and consequently may in regard of us be judg'd cold For though water being a Liquor I readily allow it a various Motion of its component Corpuscles that being requisite to make a Body fluid yet such an agitation which is sufficient for fluidity may be and often is far more remiss then that of the spirits Blood and other liquors of so hot a Sanguineous animal as Man as we see that Urine though after it has been long omitted it continues a fluid Body yet its parts are far less agitated then they were when it came hot and reeking out of the Bladder 16. And upon this occasion I shall add what by inquiry I have learned that except the parts somewhat near the superficies of the water which the heat of the Sun or the warmth of the neighbouring lower Region of the Air may give some warmth to the whole Body of the Sea is very cold for being very well acquainted with one that for some time got a livelihood by going down into the Bottom of the Sea to fetch up what could be recovered out of shipwrackt vessels I purposely inquired of him what cold he felt under water and he more then once told me that though near the Top of the water the cold were very moderate yet when he was necessitated to descend a great depth he found it so great that he could not very long support it and particularly he told me that having occasion to descend about twelve or fourteen fathom deep which is nothing in comparison of the depth of many Seas to fasten ropes to the Ordinance of a great ship that was some years since cast away near the coast of one of the Northern Countries though the Engine that was let down
cold or upon whose Account the Air produces them And if these be duly applied water will be congealed whether Air comes to touch the surface of it or no nay though Bodies which the Air can never penetrte nor congeal any of their parts be interpos'd as may appear by the Experiments formerly mention'd of freezing water included in glass bubbles and suspended in oyl of Turpentine and other uncongealed Liquors and it is worth taking notice of by them that conclude the Airs being the primum frigidum from the waters beginning to freez at the Top where 't is contiguous to the Air that it is there also where the Ice begins to thaw 21. Besides the three Opinions we have hitherto examin'd there is a fourth that justly deserves to be seriously consider'd for the learned and ingenious Gassendus is suppos'd though I doubt how truly to be the Author of it and though according to his custom he speaks warily and not so confidently of it yet in his last writings he much countenances it yet some eminently learned men as well of our own as of other Nations have resolutely enough embraced it According then to these the congelation of Liquors and the cold we meet with in the Air Water and other Bodies proceeds from the admixture of Nitrous exhalations or Corpuscles introduc'd into them And as I have a great respect for divers of these mens persons so I like very well in their opinion that they do not ascribe the supreme degree of frigefactive Virtue to the Air it self but to some adventitious thing that is mingled with it but whereas they pitch upon Nitre as the grand Universal efficient of cold I confess I cannot yet fully acquiesce in that Tenent For though I am not averse from allowing Salt-Petre to be one of those Bodies that are endued with a refrigerating power and to be copiously enough dispers'd through several portions of the Earth yet for ought I know there may be not only divers other causes of cold but divers other Bodies qualified to be Efficients of cold as well as Salt-Petre 22. And first if cold be not a positive quality but the absence of heat the removing of calorifick Agents will in many cases suffice to produce cold without the introduction of any Nitrous particles into the Body to be refrigerated But because 't is disputable whether cold be a positive quality or no we will urge this Argument no further till the Controversie be decided and till then as it will remain not improbable we propose it as no other but proceed to the next 23. In the second place I see not as yet any proof that the great cold we have formerly mention'd to be met with in the depths of that vast Body the Sea especially when it is greater elsewhere then nearer the Top where the Air may better communicate its coldness to it must be the effect of Nitrous Atoms which must certainly swarm in prodigious multitudes to be able to refrigerate every drop and sensible particle of so stupendiously vast a Body as the Ocean Besides that I remember not to have found or known it observ'd that Nitre especially in vast quantities reaches near so deep in the Earth as those parts of the Sea that are found exceeding cold And as the halituous part of Nitre is more dispos'd to fly up into the Air then dive down into the Sea so we find no great documents of its having its grosser and sensible parts abounding in the Sea-water since the evaporations of that leaves not behind it Salt-petre but common Salt But these though no light considerations are not those that most weigh with me 24. For in the next place I am not satisfied with the Experiences I find alledged to prove that 't is by Nitre that the Air and the neighboring parts of the Earth and Water not to repeat the objections I lately borrowed from the Sea receive their highest degrees of Cold. For when Gassendus and others tell us that 't is Nitre resolv'd into exhalations that make the gelid Wind which refrigerates all things it touches and penetrating into the water congeals it this I say to me will seem precarious untill Gassendus or some other for him tell us what Experiments they are which he seems in one place to intimate that this new Doctrine depends on for I confess that for my part I who have perhaps had more opportunity to resolve Nitre have seen no great feats that the steams of it have done more then those of other saline Bodies in the production of cold and the spirit of Nitre which is a liquor consisting of the volatile parts of that resolved salt not only does not that I have observed appear to the touch to have considerably if at all a greater actual cold then that of divers other Liquors but seems to have a potential heat For whether or no the Exhalations of Nitre be able to congeal water into Ice I have formerly observ'd serv'd that the spirit of Nitre or Aqua fortis will dissolve Ice into water very near if not altogether as soon as the spirit of 〈◊〉 it self which inflamable Liquor is generally acknowledg'd to be in a high degree potentially hot If Gassenaus did not mean such steams of 〈◊〉 as these which I have been 〈◊〉 of it had not been amiss to have signified what other kind of Corpuscles of resolved Nitre he meant without leaving his Reader to divine it and if we may judge of other Experiments which we lately took notice that Gassendus seems to intimate by that which he sets down a little after compar'd with that he had mention'd a little before I am not likely much to be convinc'd by them but shall rather be tempted to suspect that learned man might be impos'd upon by others to write that as matter of fact which he never had tried and yet own not the having it only by report For whereas he seems to 〈◊〉 that dissolved Nitre mingling it self with water freezes it and that in Summer yet I must freely 〈◊〉 that although 〈◊〉 other Learned Moderns teach the same thing but without any mans avouching it that I know upon his own experience I who am no 〈◊〉 to Nitrous Experiments have never been able to produce or so fortunate as to see any such effect and 〈◊〉 somewhat strange to me that Chymists who make such frequent solutions of Nitre and ofrentimes with less water then is sufficient to dissolve it all so that by consequence the proportion of the Nitre to the Water must have run through almost all the possible measures of proportion should never so much as by chance as I can hear have observ'd any such matter and that which makes me thus interpret Gassendus his meaning though in one of the two passages wherein he sets down this Experiment he mentions also snow or ice to be added to the Nitre is that in the first of those two passages he ascribes the congelation to
we must not here treat indefinitely the strange effects of cold upon other bodies being most of them produc'd by the intervention of the cold first diffus'd in the Air and those are treated of in a distinct Section wherefore we shall now give two or three instances of the sudden operations of the Cold harbour'd in the Air. The formerly mention'd English Ambassador into Russia Dr. Fletcher gives us two instances very memorable to our present purpose When you pass says he out of a warm Room into a Cold you will sensibly feel your breath to wax stark and even stifling with the cold as you draw it in and out So powerfully and nimbly does the intensely refrigerated Air work upon the Organs of respiration And whereas a very credible person now chief Physician to the Russian Emperor being ask'd by me concerning the truth of what is reported sometimes to happen at Musco and is reputed the eminentest proof that is readily observable of the extreme coldness of the air assur'd me that he himself saw the water thrown up into the air fall down actually congeal'd into ice Dr. Fletcher confirms this Report For our Ambassador also says That the sharpness of the Air you may judge of by this for that water dropped down or cast up into the Air congeal'd into Ice before it come to ground And I remember that inquiring about the probability of such Relations he answered me That being at the famous Seige of Smolensko in Russia he observ'd it to be so extremely cold in the fields that his Spittle would freez in falling betwixt his mouth and the ground and that if he spit against a Tree or a piece of wood it would not stick but fall to the foot of it 17. Among the Phaenomena of Cold relating to the air I endeavour'd to observe whether upon the change of the Weather from warm or mild to cold and frosty there would appear any difference of the weight of the Atmosphere by its being plentifully furnish'd with a new stock of such frigorifick Corpuscles as several of the modern Philosophers ascribe its coldness to but though I several times observ'd by comparing a good Barometer and sometimes also unseal'd Weather-glasses furnish'd one with a tincted Liquor and the other with Quicksilver with a good seal'd Weather-glass furnished with pure spirit of Wine that upon the coming in of clear and frosty weather the Atmosphere would very early appear sensibly heavier then before and continue so as long as the cold and clear weather lasted yet by reason of some considerations and Trials that breed some scruple in me I refer the matter to more frequent and lasting observations then I yet have been able to make in which it will concern those that have a mind to prosecute such Trials not only to consider whether or no the increased gravity of the Atmosphere may not proceed from some other Cause then the coming of frigorifick Atoms into the Air but to have a special care that their Barascopes be more carefully freed from the Air that is wont to lurk in Quick silver it self as well as other Liquors then those in the making of the Torricellian Experiment Tubes usually are least that Air getting up into the deserted part of the Tube do by its expansion and contraction obtain an unsuspected interest in the rising and falling of the subjacent Mercurial Cylinder and so impose upon them 18. Another Effect that the Cold especially in Northern Countries has oftentimes upon the Atmosphere is the making the Air more or less clear then usually it is For in the Northern Voyages the Seamen frequently complain of thick and lasting Fogs whose causes I shall not now consider but some help to guess at them may be given by what we are about to add namely that it very frequently happens on the contrary That when the cold is very intense the air grows much clearer then at other times probably because the Cold by condensing precipitates the vapours that thicken the air and by freezing the surface of the earth keeps in the steams that would else arise to thicken the air Not to dispute 〈◊〉 it may not also somewhat repress the vapours that would be afforded by the water it self since some of our Navigators observe that even when it was not cold enough to freez the surface of the Sea it would so far chill and infrigidate it that the snow would lye on it without melting 19. I remember a Swedish extraordinary Ambassador and a very knowing person whom I had the honour to be particularly acquainted with would say when he saw a frosty day accompanied with great clearness that it then look'd like a Swedish winter where when once the frosty weather is setled the sky is wont for a very long time to be very serene and 〈◊〉 and here in England we usually observe the sharpest frosty nights to be the clearest But to confirm our Observation by a very remarkable instance I shall borrow it 〈◊〉 a Navigator very curious of Celestial Observations which circumstance I mention to bring the greater credit to the following observation of Captain James which in his Journal is thus delivered The thirtieth and one and thirtieth of January there appeared in the beginning of the night more Stars in the Firmanent then ever I had before seen by two thirds I could see the Cloud in Cancer full of small Stars 20. To determine what effect the coldness of the air may have upon the Refractions of the Luminaries and other Stars I look upon as a work of no small difficulty and that would require much consideration as well as time wherefore I shall only add two or three narratives supplied me by Navigators without adding at present any thing to the matters of fact 21. The first is that famous Observation of the Dutch in Nova Zembla who take great pains to evince by several circumstances some of them highly probable that they were not mistaken in their account of time according to which they concluded that they saw the Sun whom they had lost sight of eleven weeks before about fourteen days sooner then he ought to have appear'd to them which difference has been for ought I know to the contrary by all that have taken notice of it ascrib'd to the strangely great Refraction in that Gelid and Northern air 22. And as for that other extremely cold Country where Captain James wintered it appears by his Journal that he there made divers Celestial and other observations which gave him opportunity to take notice of the Refraction and he seems to complain that he found it very great though among the particulars he takes notice of there are some that seem not very strange nor are there any that are near so wonderful as that newly mention'd of the Hollanders in Nova Zembla however in regard of the extreme coldness of the Winter air in Charleton Island it may be worth while to take notice of the following passages
to the lower part of it among other particles of the liquor that remain'd uncongeal'd yet perhaps 't were not amiss to try whether in very large though not deep vessels this Experiment especially promoted by some expedients that practise may suggest may not in some seasons and places be brought to be of some advantage Whilest I was endeavouring by some of the above recited Experiments to make some separations in liquors by congelation I thought fit to try by the same means what separations I could make in some bodies betwixt liquors and those more stable parts among which they were ingag'd hoping upon considerations which 't were too long to enumerate that if such attempts should succeed they might afford hints of a Luciferous nature I took then divers vegetable substances of differing kinds as Turnips Carrets Beets Apples and tender wood freshly cut off from growing trees as also divers Animal substances as Musculous flesh Livers Brains Eyes Tongues and other parts and expos'd them to a very sharp cold that they might be throughly frozen Now one of the chief things that I propos'd to my self in this attempt was to try how far I could by congelation make discovery of any thing about the Texture of Animals and Plants that had not been taken notice of by Anatomists themselves and would scarce otherwise be render'd visible And I easily found that I had not groundlesly imagin'd that in divers Succulent bodies both vegetable and animal the sap or the juice that was so dispers'd among the other parts and divided into such minute portions as not to be manifestly enough discriminated might by congelation be both discern'd and separated from the rest For in divers Plants I found the Alimental juice to be congeal'd into vast multitudes of distinct Corpuscles of ice some of which when the bodies were tranversly cut with a sharp knife and left a while in the Air might be wip'd or scrap'd off from the superficies of the body upon which 't would after a while appear in the form of an Efflorescence almost like meal but in others I took a better and quicker course for by warily compressing the frozen bodies I could presently make the icy Corpuscles start in vast numbers out of their little holes and though some of these were so minute as to invite me to use a Microscope that magnifi'd a little not having then any of my best at hand yet in some bodies and especially in Carrets and Beets the icy Corpuscles were big enough to be distinctly or apart conspicuous insomuch that I was not mistaken in hoping that the figures as well as sizes for as to the Colour it was scarce discernible in the ice produc'd in so deeply crimson a Root as the Beet it self of these little pieces of ice might be guess'd at by the bigness and shape of the Pores that were left in the more stable part or if I may so call it the Parenchyma of the root though in making an estimate of these Cavities as well as in discovering the order wherein they are rang'd I found it useful to cut the frozen roots sometimes according to their length and sometimes quite cross For by that means there would appear in Carrets for example of the larger sort a great disparity in the order of the Pores which when the root was divided by a plain parallel to the Basis appear'd plac'd in lines almost streight tending almost like the spoaks of a wheel from the middle to the circumference But if the Carret were slit from one end towards the other the icy Corpuscles and pores would seem rang'd in an order that would appear very differing but which I have not now the leisure to describe no more then what I observed with a Microscope about the ice and pores of Apples the Tongues of Animals Chips of green and sappy wood c. expos'd to congelation only this I shall not pretermit That as I many years since made and as I now find too freely communicated an Experiment menon'd long after in other papers of freezing the eyes of Oxen and other Animals whereby the soft and the fluid humors of that admirable organ may be so hardned as to become tractable even to unskilful Dissectors So I did on this occasion apply that Experiment to the brains of Animals which though too soft to be easily dissected especially by those that are not dexterous may by congelation be made very manageable by them And besides that in dissecting the hardned brain it sometimes seem'd that the knife did cut through multitudes of icy Corpuscles as when one cuts a frozen Apple the substance of the brain seem'd also to the eye to be stuffed with them and the Ventricles of it did at least conspicuously harbour pieces of ice if it were not fill'd up with them and the manifest difference of Texture that there is between the white and yelk of a througly frozen Egg and also betwixt the Crystalline and the Aqueous and the Vitreous humors of the eye wherein by congelation the Crystalline alone loses its transparency but acquires no conspicuous ice whilest the others are full of ice and that diaphanous these and such like disparities I say may invite one to hope that some things may by congealing of bodies be discovered about their Texture that may afford sagacious Anatomists improvable hints I know not whether it will be thought worth while to take notice That neither an Eye nor a Liver nor a lean piece of flesh nor a live Fish nor a living Frog being frozen and put into cold water was observ'd to be upon its thawing cas'd with ice as frozen Eggs and Apples are wont to be because having forgot to make the Experiment above once I dare not much rely on it but whereas we have formerly observ'd that congelation does most commonly spoil or at least impair Eggs and Apples and Flesh and many other bodies I think it may not be unworthy to be consider'd how far and in what cases we may give a Mechanical account of this Phaenomenon For though the immersion of frozen bodies in cold water be allowed to thaw them with less prejudice then if they were thaw'd hastily by the sire or suffer'd to thaw themselves in the Air yet there have been complaints made That notwithstanding this expedient several bodies have been much the worse for having been throughly frozen now since I have lately shown that in many stable bodies the Alimental juice is by congelation turn'd into ice and have formerly evinc'd that water and aqueous liquors are expanded by congelation I see not why we may not suspect that the innumerable icy Corpuscles into which the Alimental juice is turn'd by the frost being each of them expanded proportionably to their respective bignesses may not only prejudice the whole by having their own constitution impair'd as has been formerly observ'd in Aligant and other Vinous liquors but may upon their expansion crush in some places and distend in others the
that Carneades being wont so to propose his opinion about Antiperistasis as only to deny that it is clearly made out by the reasons or Experiments that are commonly produc'd to evince it it were somewhat improper to urge him with observations that are not familiar and wont to be imploy'd but I know too that he is not so rigid an Adversary as not to allow me to mention some uncommon relations that I learned from men of good credit I shall tell you then that having purposely inquired of ingenious men that had been very deep under ground some in Coal-pits and some in Mines One of them affirmed that at the 〈◊〉 of the Grove as they call it or Pit he found it very hot in September And another that he often found it hot enough to be troublesome in Winter And a third who is himself a great seeker for Mines and a Master of considerable ones that he found it to be hot all the year long And to manifest that such Observations will hold even in gelid Regions I shall repeat to you what I remember I read in the voyage of that ingenious Navigator Captain James who giving an account of Charleton Island which by his relation seems to be as cold as Iceland itself says That his men found it more mortifying cold to wade through the water in the beginning of June when the Sea was all full of ice then in December when it was increasing And he adds that which makes more to our present purpose and proves the other part of the doctrine of Antiperistasis That from their Well out of which they had water in December they had none in July And to strengthen the observation yet further I will acquaint you with a relation to this purpose not unworthy your notice For hearing of an ingenious Physician that liv'd some years in and about Musco I applied my self to him as possibly you may have done for if I mistake not I have seen you together to know whether in that frozen Region he observed the Cellars to be hot in Winter And his answer to That and some other Questions of the like nature I put to him amounted in short to this That when I enquired whether their Springs and Wells were not all frozen in the Winter he told me that he saw some Springs whose warers froze not at all near the Spring-head but at a good distance from thence it began to be thinly cas'd over with ice He added That his own Well was about six fathoms deep between the surface of the earth and that of the water and that the water in it was as I remember about three or four fathoms deep and that not only this Well froze not all the Winter but that the Well of his neighbour which was but one fathom deep to the superficies of the water did not freez neither And to satisfie my curiosity about the steams of this water he told me that when a Bucket of water was newly drawn if it were agitated it would smoak But that from the Well it self when the water in it was left quiet and unstirred he did not perceive any smoak to arise 8. To all this I shall add this further circumstance that having purposely inquired whether in the Winter he found it as hot in Cellars at Musco as it is wont to be in that season in ours He answered me that when the doors and windows were carefully shut to hinder the immediate commerce betwixt the included and external Air he often found if he stay'd long in his Cellar it would not only defend him from the sharpness of the Russian cold as bitter as that is wont to be in Winter but keep him warm enough to be ready to sweat though he laid by his Furs So that if we may rely either upon the Testimony of our senses we must necessarily admit Cellars to be warmer in Winter then in Summer and consequently allow an Antiperistasis 9. Carneades Though I were not in haste I should not think it necessary to reply any thing else to the first part of what was said by Themistius then that what he alledges of the Universality of the Opinion he maintains may serve to recommend that which he opposes For the vulgar Doctrine about Antiperistasis being as he urges receiv'd and taught in all the Schools the Innovators he declaims against must have learned it there among the other Peripatetick tenents that youth is wont to be imbued with in those places so that it may rather seem the love of truth then of singularity that engages them against an opinion which before was their own as well as that of the generality of Scholars aud consequently against which they cannot maintain a Paradox that does not imply a Retractation But I shall not prosecute my Answer to Themistius's preamble since Eleutherius whom I am chiefly to speak to is too much a Philosopher to think Truth less her self for being slenderly attended or to think any men the less like to be Her followers because they are but few To come then directly to the controversie it self I think I need not tell one of you that the other mistakes my opinion about it For I perceive Eleutherius hath not quite forgotten that I have not been wont to deny an Antiperistasis as it may be but only as it is wont to be explicated But since Themistius seems to be willing to have me his Antagonist in this controversie and since Eleutherius himself seems to conspire with him I am content to act for a while the part you Gentlemen would have me take upon me and will propose to you part of what I would say for the opinion you impute to me in case I were really of it 10. To come then to the controversie it self though Themistius has drawn his proofs for the Antiperistasis of the Schools partly from Reason and partly from Experience yet the very same two Topicks seem to me to afford considerations that may justly warrant our calling it in question 11. And first if we look upon the reason of the thing considered abstractedly from the Experiments that are pretended to evince an Antiperistasis we cannot but think it may be very rational I say not to doubt of it but to reject it For in the first place according to the course of Nature one contrary ought to destroy not to corroborate the other And next 't is a maxime among the Peripateticks themselves That natural causes always act as much as they can And certainly as to our case wherein we treat not of living creatures I cannot but think the Axiom physically demonstrative For inanimate Agents act not by choice but by a necessary impulse and not being endow'd with Understanding and Will cannot of themselves be able to moderate or to suspend their actions And as for what Themistius alledges that it was necessary for the Preservation of Cold and Heat that they should be endowed with such a power of intending themselves
fires shining in the night sometimes in one place sometimes in another which were suppos'd to be kindled by the sulphurous and other subterraneous exhalations and that when they perceiv'd those fires especially if any number appear'd in several places those that were well acquainted with the coast would not continue long out at Sea but rather quit an opportunity of catching Fish then not make seasonably to the shore having often observed and particularly this last year that bold and unexperienced Mariners by slighting these forerunners of storms were in few hours shipwrack'd by them 48. To this I shall add what happened some years since upon the Irish coast near a strong Fortress called Duncannon where divers of the ships Royal of England lying at anchor in a place where they apprehended no danger from the wind there seem'd suddenly to ascend out of the water not far from them a black cloud in shape and bigness not much unlike a Barrel which mounting upwards was not long after follow'd as the most experienced Pilot foretold so hideous a storm as forc'd those ships to go to Sea again and had like to have cast them away in it And this account was both written by the principal officers of the Squadron to their superiors in England and given soon after it happened by the chief of those eye-witnesses and particularly by the Pilot to a very near kinsman of mine well vers'd in Maritine affairs that commanded the land forces in those parts as a truth no less known then memorable 49. And on occasion of what I was saying about the eruption of hot steams in several parts of the Earth I now call to mind something that I have met with in a very small but curious Dissertation De admirandis Hungariae aquis whose Anonymous Author I gather from some passages in the Tract it self to have been a Nobleman Governor of Saros and some other places in Hungary and to have written this discourse both for and to that inquisitive German Baron Sigis mundus Liber famous for the account he gave the world of the Ambassy whereon he was sent by the German to the Russian Emperor This Anonymous but noble writer tells us then that in that part of Hungary which he calls Comitatus Zoliensis there is a gaping piece of ground which does emit such mortal exspirations that they suffocate not only Cats and Dogs purposely held at the end of long poles over the cleft but kill even Birds that attempt to fly over it And in other places of the same Tract I have met with many other relations which if I had time to make a particular mention of would much countenance what I have been lately saying but though I pretermit several other instances I cannot but take especial notice of one which together with what I lately mention'd to have happened near Duncannon may make it probable that not only under the surface of the dry ground but in that part of the Terrestrial Globe that is covered with water there may arise streams and consequently Exhalations actually and that considerably hot For in one place he takes notice that not far from the well known City of Buda there is a hot Spring which they call Purgatory which the waters of Danubius it self are not able to keep from being hot nay within the very Banks betwixt which that great River runs there boil up hot Srings where those that will go deep enough into the water may commodiously bath themselves And elsewhere speaking of the River Istrogranum in the same County he adds That not only the Banks of it but within the very River it self one may discover hot Springs by removing the Sand at the bottom with ones feet To this I shall add That having heard of a Ditch in the North of England in some regards more strange though less famous then the sulphureous Grotta near Naples whence not only subterraneal steams but those so sulphureous as to be easily Inflamable did constantly and plentifully ascend into the Air I had the curiosity to make inquiry about it of the Minister of the place a very learned Man and conversant in Mines who then happened to be my neighbour and he attested the truth of the relation upon his own knowledge And it was confirm'd to me by a very ingenious Gentleman who went purposely to visit this place and found it true That a lighted Candle or some such actually burning body being held where this Exhalation issued out of the Earth would kindle it and make it actually flame for a good while and if I misremember not as long as one pleas'd And as this place was but few years since taken notice of so there may be probably very many others yet undiscovered that may supply the Air with store of Mineral exhalations proper to generate fiery Meteors and Winds I remember that having lately ask'd an inquisitive Gentleman that is a great searcher after Mines whether he did not observe some meteors near those places where he is most conversant he told me that 't is very usual in some of them to see certain great fires moving in the Air which in those places diggers because of some resemblance real or imaginary are wont to call Draggons And the Russian Emperors Physician you were speaking of inform'd me a while since that he had not long ago observ'd in Winter a River in Muscovy where though the rest of the surface was frozen there was a part of it near a mile long that remain'd uncovered with ice which probably was kept from being generated there by those subterraneous Exhalations since he says he saw them ascend up all the way like the smoak of an Oven And in case the matter of fact delivered by Olaus Magnus be true concerning the strange thaws that sometimes happen with terrible noises in the great Lake Veter those wonderful Phaenomena may not improbably be ascrib'd to the ascent of great store of hot subterraneal steams which suddenly cracking the thick and solid ice in many places at once produce the hideous Noises and the hasty Thaw that he speaks of And this suspicion may be countenanced partly by this circumstance that before these sudden thaws the Lake begins with great noise to boil at the bottom and partly by what is related by a more Authentick writer I mean that learned Traveller the Jesuite Martinius who witnesses that at Peking the royal City of China 't is very usual that after the Rivers and Ponds have continued hard frozen over during the Winter the Thaw is made in one day which since the freezing of the waters as he tells us required many makes it very probable That the sudden thaw is effected as he also inclines to think by subterraneal steams which I may well suppose to be exceeding copious and to diffuse themselves every way to a very great extent since they are able so soon to thaw the Rivers and Ponds of a large Territory and
possible cause of cold in those places that are near the Pole or where the obliquity of the Sun is great 4. How water may be congealed by Cold may be explained in this manner Let A. in the first figure represent the Sun and B. the Earth A. will therefore be much greater then B. Let E. F. be in the plain of the Aequinoctial to which let G. H. I. K. and L. C. be parallel Lastly let C. and D. be the Poles of the Earth The air therefore by its action in those parallels will rake the superficies of the Earth and that with a motion so much the stronger by how much the parallel Circles towards the Poles grew less and less From whence must arise a wind which will force together the uppermost parts of the water and withal raise them a little weakening their endeavour towards the Center of the Earth And from their endeavour towards the Center of the Earth joyned with the endeavour of the said wind the uppermost parts of the water will be press'd together and coagulated that is to say the top of the water will be skinned over and hardened and so again the water next the Top will be hardened in the same manner till at length the ice be thick And this ice being now compacted of little hard Bodies must also contain many particles of air receiv'd into it As Rivers and Seas so also in the like manner may the Clouds be frozen For when by the ascending and discendding of several clouds at the same time the air intercepted between them is by compression forced out it rakes and by little and little hardens them And though those small drops which usually make clouds be not yet united into greater bodies yet the same wind will be made and by it as water is congealed into ice so will vapours in the same manner be congealed into snow From the same cause it is that ice may be made by art and that not far from the fire for it is done by the mingling snow and salt together and by burying in it a small vessel full of water Now when the snow and salt which have in them a great deal of air are melting the air which is 〈◊〉 out every way in wind rakes the sides of the vessel and as the wind by its motion rakes the vessel so the vessel by the same motion and action congeals the water within it 5. We find by Experience that cold is always more remiss in places where it rains and where the weather is cloudy things being alike in all other respects then where the air is clear And this agreeth very well with what I said before for in clear weather the course of the wind which as I said even now rak'd the superficies of the Earth as it is free from all interruption so also it is very strong But when small drops of water are either rising or falling that wind is repelled broken and dissipated by them and the less the wind is the less is the cold 6. We find also by experience that in deep Wells the water freezeth not so much at it doth upon the superficies of the Earth For the wind by which ice is made entring into the Earth by reason of the laxity of its parts more or less loseth some of its force though not much So that if the Well be not deep it will freez whereas if it be so deep as that the wind which causeth cold cannot reach it it will not freez 7. We find moreover by experience that ice is lighter then water the cause whereof is manifest from that which I have already shown namely that the air is receiv'd in and mingled with the particles of the water whilest it is congealing 8. To examine now Mr. Hobs's Theory concerning Cold we may in the first place take notice that his very Notion of Cold is not so accurately nor warily deliver'd I will not here urge that it may well be Question'd whether the tending outwards of the spirits and fluid parts of the Bodies of animals do necessarily proceed from and argue heat Since in our Pneumatical Engine when the air is withdrawn from about an included viper to mention no other Animals there is a great intumescence and consequently a greater indeavour outwards of the fluid parts of the body then we see made by any degree of heat of the ambient Air wont to be produc'd by the Sun This I say I will not insist on but rather take notice that though Mr. Hobs tells us that to cool is to make the exterior parts of the body indeavour inwards yet our Experiments tell us that when a very high degree of Cold is introdnc'd not only into water but into Wine and divers other partly Aqueous liquors there is a plain intumescence and consequently indeavour outwards of the parts of the refrigerated Body And certainly Cold having an operation upon a great multitude and variety of bodies as well as upon our Sensories he that would give a satisfactory definition of it must take into his consideration divers other effects besides those it produces on humane bodies And even in these he will not easily prove that in every case any such indeavour inwards from the Ambient Aetherial substance as his Doctrine seems to suppose is necessary to the perception of Cold since as the mind perceives divers other qualities by various motions in the Nervous or Membranous parts of the sentient so Cold may be perceiv'd either by the Decrement of the agitation of the parts of the Object in reference to those of the Sensory or else by some differing impulse of the sensitive parts occasion'd by some change made in the motion of the blood or spirits upon the deadning of that motion or by the turbulent motion of those excrementitious steams that are wont when the blood circulates as nimbly and the pores are kept as open as before to be dissipated by insensible transpiration 9. It may afford some illustration to this matter to add That having inquir'd of some Hysterical Women who complain'd to me of their distempers whether they did not sometimes find a very great coldness in some parts of their heads especially at the Top I was answered that they did so and one of them complain'd that she felt in the upper part of her head such a Coldness as if some body were pouring cold water upon it And having inquired of a couple of eminent Physicians of great practise about this matter they both assur'd me that many of their Hysterical patients had made complaints to them of such great Coldness in the upper part of the head and some also along the Vertebra's of the Neck and Back And one of these Experienc'd Doctors added that this happen'd to some of his Patients when they seem'd to him and to themselves to be otherwise Hot. The noble Avicen also some where takes notice that the invenom'd Bitings of some kinds of Serpents creatures too well
Cochanele was boiled in water to a very high tincture and frozen and to twice four ounces of this decoction was added in one glass a little spoonful of spirit of Wine and in another as much Sea salt-water All these were frozen throughout and every part of this ice seemed to me of an equal colour though the edges as thinner and nearer the light appeared of a brighter colour as they do unfrozen but the glasses being broken shewed no discernable difference in any of them neither as to colour nor taste The like trials were made with Maddes weed and Indico and the success was the same Secondly I exposed a pint Porringer full of the decoction of soot which the air relaxing did only freez an inch thick this continued above a week consistent in a thawing season and very solid Some that saw it judged it to be brown Sugar Candy the taste whereof was near if not altogether as strong as the uncongealed liquor remaining at the bottom And in another trial when the whole was frozen no concentration was seen But though it was not my hap to find this effect my trials having been made in Vials square Cylindrical or round yet Mr. Hauk a worthy fellow of this Society happily lighted on it as you may perceive by his relation and Schemes of his Glasses hereunto annexed Some affirm as an effect of freezing an addition of weight made in the bodies frozen but this affirmation answers not my trials For in four Eggs and four Apples fully frozen I found the weight of them the same when frozen and thawed as they had before they were exposed each of the Eggs and Apples being weighed in this triple state both severally and joyntly with the particular weights I shall not trouble you Besides that freezing adds no weight 't is apparent in sealed Glasses from whence nothing can expire and by exact ponderation of them I could not perceive any the least difference in weight in the said triple state This I tried several times with as much exactness as possibly I could and still found the same event Another property of freezing is to render many bodies more friable and brittle as most woods as also Iron and Steel as every one knoweth that hath used Crosbows in frosty seasons and so likewise the bones of animals and 't is commonly observed by Chirurgions that more men break their legs and arms in such seasons then at any other time of the year especially such who have been tainted with the Lues venerea as Hildanus somewhere notes I shall now conclude the effects of freezing by ranging them into good and bad The good are the long preserving bodies most subject to putrifaction healthiness and confirming the tone of all animals and thickning the hairs and furs of such as have them fatten some Besides it exceedingly clears the air and other bodies as 't is manifest by the stinking Seasalt-water before mentioned as also by this that follows namely I took six of the most musty stone-Bottles I could procure and competently fill'd them with water which after freezing and thawing again became as sweet as ever they were before Bad effects are the killing and destroying animals and vegetables by congealing and stopping their vital and nourishing juices rendring them totally immovable 'T is observable that in Greenland and Nova Zembla nothing but grass grows as also what was told me by Dr. Collins the present Physician of the Emperor of Russia that no thorny plant nor thistles grow in that Countrey And this present year most of the Rosemary and Sage about London was wholly destroyed besides most of the more tender Plants My fourth proposal was the properties and qualities of ice some whereof my task engageth me to enumerate only such are its slipperiness smoothness hardness whereby and by its bulk and motion it breaks down bridges c. its firmness and strength to bear carriages and burdens its diaphaneity which is much less then the liquor of which 't is made For I could never discern any object though but confusedly a foot beyond the clearest piece of ice by reason of the many bubbles and luminous parts within it Which bubbles shew only shadows but the ice its self interposed betwixt your eye and a candle appears in many round circles from which proceeds many rays of light four or five or more in the form of a Star of about a ¼ of an inch in diameter which so glase your eyes you can scarcely see any thing but bright light and shadow As for its penetration and thickness something hath been said above to which I shall add that I have seen the Thames ice of the thickness of eight inches or more near the middle of the River and on the sides much more And in Garden walks the earth frozen near two foot deep whereas on the sides of the same walks on a richer mould the frost did not reach much above one foot and ¼ and Pipes of Lead have been broken above a foot under the surface of the ground I shall not mention the huge mountains of ice found in the most Northerly Seas but proceed to its weight 'T is generally known that ice swims upon the water But I have seen snow-balls moistened only with water and then compressed with a strong force and afterwards frozen to sink besides the congealed oyl of Vitriol descends in water and common ice is frequently observed under water whether the solutions of salts frozen will sink was by me forgotten to observe and whether coagulated oyl will sink in unfrozen as Bartholine affirms Some affirm that snow-balls hard pressed without addition of water will sink but experience teacheth me the contrary As for its tactile qualities every one knows 't is colder then water which you may increase by adding salt unto it or rather snow Smell it hath none but it binds up that quality in all but most spirituous bodies which it also in some degrees refracts in them Lastly ice yields both reflection and refraction whereof I shall speak when I come to its uses My fifth head was lets and helps in freezing which I shall 〈◊〉 dispatch Those besides the North and North-east winds the absence of the Sun and the highest parts of houses or mountains are the mixture of snow and salt then which there 's nothing more painfully and unsufferably cold to my feeling as is apparant by the trick of freezing with snow and salt by the fire side as also by the ingenious way of making cups of ice invented by an incomparable person Add hereunto that water falling or thrown upon ice or snow soon becomes congealed A mixture also of ice beaten into powder and mixed with common Sea-salt which is best or with Kelp Alume Vitriol or Nitre And here note that vessels fill'd with water and set in these mixtures begin their freezing at the bottom of the liquor and consequently are not so subject to be broken as those are which are not set in these
a far deeper colour and bitterer taste in the middle and towards the bottom then towards the outsides of it And whereas Barclay relates that King James being in Denmark to fetch his Queen thence in the Winter season had his nose and ears in danger of Gangreening which being timely perceived by some of the King of Denmarks Nobility they caused the parts to be rubbed with snow and so the danger was avoided the same travellers affirm that in the Northern parts where men become stiff with cold and almost frozen to death that they rub the frozen parts with snow or else cast the whole body into water by which means the whole body is crusted over with ice as Eggs and Apples are as if the freezing Atoms did pass from the body frozen into the water or snow and this way of curing Gangreens from cold Sennertus doth prescribe To make some Experiment hereof I exposed flesh and fish and found that by immersing them into water they soon became more limber and flexible and more easily yielding to the knife and compassed with a crust of ice of the thickness of about half a crown manifest tokens of their thawing and being cut they discovered nothing of ice in them This for more certainty I often reiterated as also in Eggs and Apples above a dozen times and never failed of unthawing them by this way 'T is to be noted if you immerse the flesh fish eggs or apples deep into the water no ice will appear on their outsides but only when you hold them neer the surface of the water As to the Persian Experiment mentioned by Olearius of making huge heaps of ice to be preserved for cooling of their drinks I observed that by pouring water into an open Pan or into a Flask gradually some at one time some at another I could quickly freez by this way a whole Flaskfull when near half of a Flask filled at one though helped by art was unfrozen I observed also that the ditches betwixt Southwark and Redderiff had acquired an exceeding thickness of ice caused by the flowing of the water in them at full Tide for new water being brought in by the Tide was there congeal'd to the thickness of some inches every ebbing and flowing I observed also the ice on the banks of Thames above two yards thick the inhabitants told me they had seen it three or four yards thick which thus came to pass the Tide flowing in and meeting with great flakes of ice drove them to the banks and lodged them on the ice there frozen which flakes uniting there with the former ice raised it to that excessive height or thickness Besides every one may observe in London Streets and elsewhere in Chanels where no constant current is that water coming from the houses soon fill the Chanels with thick ice for running but a little at a time it freezeth almost as fast as it cometh thither Nay I have seen ice of some yards thickness in such places where a small rill or stream of water gently falls on the side of a hill Amongst those things that will freez Mortar and Plaister of Paris were omitted and thence 't is that Plaisterers and Bricklayers play all the Winter My Lord Verulam in his natural History and some from him have affirmed to me that Apples and Eggs covered with a wet cloath will not freez but I find no difference in those that are thus covered and them that are not Add to those that sink upon congelation all oyls from Animals and from Vegetables that are extracted by expression or boiling Add to those that freez not water and Sugar boiled to the consistence of a Syrup and also all other Syrups none whereof I could ever take notice or learn by others that they would freez 'T is true that water having an equal quantity of Sugar dissolved in it will freez but with a little more mixed therewith freezeth not To try the effect of cold upon Loadstones I exposed several of them in the open Air and also within rooms in the most severe weather the needle being kept in a warm place At other times I exposed the needle to the cold air keeping the stones warm at other times both were exposed but in none of my Experiments could I conclude any thing certain to their attractive faculty for the sphere of their activity was found to be sometimes greater and sometimes less to a considerable difference in ten several good stones imployed for this purpose I essayed also to find out a standard of cold whereby to fit the tinged spirit of Wine for the Weather-glasses and to that end made use of Conduit water and the distilled waters of Plantane Poppies Black-Cherry Nightshade Scurvigrass and Horse-raddish all which were first placed in the same room where a fire was kept and then removed and measured out into spoons in equal quantities and also a drop of them dropt on the same bench but though this was often tried I could not make any sure inference from them only I observed that the black-Cherry water did for the most part freez first but the other with very great uncertainty The Horse-raddish and Scurvigrass waters were for the most part froze last The best way to discover the very beginning of freezing of liquors is to move a Pin or Needle through the liquors whereby the ice will be raised and become discernable when the naked eye can discover none at all FINIS Figure 1. Page 9 10 11 â— 98. A the Ball or Egg. B C the Stem D the little Aqueous Cylinder Figure 2. the open Weather glass mentioned pag. 24 43 Figure 3. the seal'd Weather-glass or Thermoscopâ—mentioned pag. 24 55 56. Figure 4. the Barometer oâ— Mercurial Standard placed in Frame B B mentioned pag. 25 Figure 5. an Instrumenâ— mentioned pag. 93. A the Vial. B C the Pipe cemented in t the neck of the Vial open at â— and seal'd at B. Figure 6. pag. 97. A the Bolt-head B the small Stem B C the Cylinder of wateâ— inclos'd Figure 7. pag. 101. * It was thought needless to insert Mr. Hobs's Scheme touching this subject because it only shews that Wind is the cause of Cold. Sceptical Chymist * Chapter the fifth of that Treatise * The two Essays of the Unsuccesfulness of Experiments * Another remarkable instance of the variable success of the Experiments of Cold I 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with in an Experiment 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 Dr. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of oyl of 〈◊〉 For though I 〈◊〉 that Liquor in smal ' vessels of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of the Air in 〈◊〉 nights 〈◊〉 extraordinarily sharp 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is more our 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Salt would 〈◊〉 the Experiment succeed 〈◊〉 that we tri'd it with several parcels of Oyl of Vitriol And yet that the Learned Doctor by the help of the Air alone for he uses not our 〈◊〉 mixture did bring that Liquor either to