Page:The Works of Francis Bacon (1884) Volume 1.djvu/228



sunbeams hot to sense.

The moonbeams not hot, but rather conceived to have a quality of cold, for that the greatest colds are noted to be about the full, and the greatest heats about the change. Query.

The beams of the stars have no sensible heat by themselves; but are conceived to have an augmentative heat of the sunbearr by the instance following. The same climate arctic and antarctic are observed to differ in cold, viz. that the antarctic is the more cold, and it is manifest the antarctic hemisphere is thinner planted with stars.

The heats observed to be greater in July than in June; at which time the sun is nearest the greatest fixed stars, viz. Cor Leonis, Cauda Leonis, Spica, Virginis, Sirius, Canicula.

The conjunction of any two of the three highest planets noted to cause great heats.

Comets conceived by some to be as well causes as effects of heat, much more the stars.

The sunbeams have greater heat when they are more perpendicular than when they are more oblique: as appeareth in difference of regions, and the difference of the times of summer and winter in the same region; and chiefly in the difference of the hours of mid-day, mornings, evenings, in the same day.

The heats more extreme in July and August than in Mayor June, commonly imputed to the stay and continuance of heat.

The heats more extreme under the tropics than under the line: commonly imputed to the stay and continuance of heat, because the sun there doth as it were double a cape.

The heats more about three or four of clock than at noon; commonly imputed to the stay and continuance of heat.

The sun noted to be hotter when it shineth forth between clouds, than when the sky is open and serene.

The middle region of the air hath manifest effects of cold, notwithstanding locally it be nearer the sun, commonly imputed to antiperistasis, assuming that the beams of the sun are hot either by approach or by reflection, and that falleth in the middle term between both; or if, as some conceive, it be only by reflection, then the cold of that region resteth chiefly upon distance. The instances showing the cold of that region, are the snows which descend, the hails which descend, and the snows and extreme colds which are upon high mountains.

But Qu. of such mountains as adjoin to sandy vales, and not to fruitful vales, which minister no vapours: or of mountains above the region of vapours, as is reported of Olympus, where any inscription upon the ashes of the altar remained untouched of wind or dew. And note, it is also reported that men carry up sponges with vinegar to thicken their breath, the air growing too fine for respiration, which seemeth not to stand with coldness.

The clouds make a mitigation of the heat of the sun. So doth the interposition of any body, which we term shades: but yet the nights in summer are many times as hot to the feeling of men's bodies as the days are within doors, where the beams of the sun actually beat not.

There is no other nature of heat known from the celestial bodies or from the air, but that which cometh by the sunbeams. For in the countries near the pole, we see the extreme colds end in the summer months, as in the voyage of Nova Zembla, where they could not disengage their