Georges Buffon - Buffon's Natural History. Volume X (of 10)

After all there appear to be two kinds of heat, the one luminous, of which the sun is the focus; the other obscure, of which the grand reservoir is the terrestrial globe. Our body, as making part of the globe, participates of this obscure heat; and it is for this reason, that it is still obscure to us, because we do not perceive it by any one of our senses. It is with respect to this heat of the globe, as with its motion, we are subject to and participate thereof without feeling or doubting of it: from hence it happened that physicians at first carried all their views and enquiries on the heat of the sun, without suspecting that it makes but a very small part of what we really feel; but having made instruments to discover the difference of the immediate heat of the rays of the sun, they with astonishment found that the heat of them was sixty-six times stronger in summer than in winter, notwithstanding the strongest heat of our summer differs only a seventh from the strongest cold of our winter; from whence they have concluded, that, independent of the heat we receive from the sun, there emanates another, even from this terrestrial globe, which is much more considerable; insomuch, that it is at present demonstrable, that this heat, which escapes from the bowels of the earth, is in our climate at least twenty-nine times in summer, and four hundred times in winter, stronger than the heat which comes to us from the sun.

This strong heat which resides in the interior part of the globe, and which, without ceasing to emanate externally, must, like an element, enter into the combination of all the other elements. If the sun is the parent of Nature, the heat of the earth must be the mother; they both unite to produce, support, and animate organized beings, and to assimilate and compose inanimate substances. This internal heat of the globe, which tends always from the centre to the circumference, is, in my opinion, a great agent in nature. We can scarcely doubt but it is the principal influence on the perpendicularity of the trunks of trees, on the phenomena of electricity, on the effects of magnetism, &c. But as I do not pretend to make a physical treatise here, I shall confine myself to the effects of this heat on the other elements. It is alone sufficient to maintain the rarefaction of the air to the degree that we breathe in: it is more than sufficient to keep water in its state of fluidity, for we have lowered the thermometers to the depth of 120 fathoms, and have found the temperature of the water was there nearly the same as at the like depth in the earth, namely, ten degrees two thirds. We must not, therefore, be surprized, especially as salt acts as a prevention, that the sea in general does not freeze, that fresh water freezes but to a certain thickness, and that the water at bottom always remains liquid, even in the most intense frosts.

But of all the elements the earth is that on which this internal heat must necessarily have produced, and still produces the greatest effects. This heat originally was doubtless much greater than it is at present; therefore we must refer to it, as to the first cause, all the sublimations, precipitations, aggregations, and separations, which have been, and still continue to be made in the internal part of the globe, especially in the external layer which we have penetrated, and the matter of which has been removed by the convulsions of Nature, or by the hands of man. The whole mass of the globe having been melted, or liquefied, by fire, the internal is only a concrete or discreet glass, whose simple substance cannot receive any alteration by heat alone; there is, therefore, only an upper and superficial layer, which being exposed to the action of external causes united to that of the internal heat, will have undergone all the modifications, differences, and forms, in one word, of Mineral Substances, which their combined actions were enabled to produce.

Fire, which at first sight appears to be only a compound of heat and light, might also be a modification of the matter, though it does not essentially differ from either, and still less from both taken together. Fire never exists without heat, but it can exist without light. Heat alone, deprived of all appearance of light, can produce the same effects as the most violent fire; so can also light, when it is united. Light seems to carry a substance in itself which has no need of fuel; but fire cannot subsist without absorbing the air, and it becomes more violent in proportion to the quantity it absorbs; whereas light, concentrated and received into a vessel exhausted of air, acts as fire in air; and heat, confined and retained in a narrow space, subsists and even augments with a very small quantity of food. The most general difference between fire, heat, and light, appears, therefore, to consist in the quantity, and perhaps quality, of their food.

Air is the first food of fire; combustible matters are only the second. It has been demonstrated, by experiments, that a little spark of fire, placed in a vessel well closed, in a short time absorbs a great quantity of air, and becomes extinguished as soon as the quantity or quality, of this food becomes deficient. By other experiments it is proved, that the most combustible matters will not consume in vessels well closed, although exposed to the action of the greatest fire. Air is, therefore, the first and true food of fire, and combustible matters would not be able to supply it without the assistance and mediation of this element.

We have observed that heat is the cause of all fluidity, and we find, by comparing some fluids together, that more heat is requisite to keep iron in fusion than gold; and more to keep gold than tin; much less is necessary for wax, for water less than that, and still less for spirits of wine, and a mere trifle is sufficient for mercury, since the latter goes 187 degrees below what water can without losing its fluidity; mercury, therefore, is the most fluid of all matter, air excepted. Now this superior fluidity in air indicates the least degree of adherence possible between its constituting parts, and supposes them of such a figure as only to be touched at one point. It may be also imagined, that, being endowed with so little apparent energy and mutual attraction, they are, for that reason, less massive, and more light, than those of every other body; but that conclusion appears unfounded, from the comparison of mercury, the next fluid body, but of which the constituting parts appear to be more massive and heavy than those of any other matter, excepting gold. The greater or lesser fluidity, does not, therefore, indicate that the parts of the fluid are more or less weighty, but only that their adherence is so much the less, and their separation so much the easier.

Air, therefore, of all known matter, is that which heat divides the easiest, and is very near the nature of fire, whose property consists in the expansive motions of its parts; and it is from this similarity that air so strongly augments the activity of fire, to which it is the most powerful assistant, and the most intimate and necessary food. Even combustible matters will not keep it alive if deprived of air, for under this privation the most intense fire will not burn; but a single spark of air is sufficient to kindle them, and in proportion as it is supplied with that element the fire becomes strong, extended, and devouring.

Artificial phosphorus, and gunpowder, seem, at first, to be an exception, for they have no need of the assistance of renewed air to inflame and wholly consume them: their combustion may be performed in the closest vessels, but that is because those matters, which are also the most combustible, contain the necessary quantity of air in their substance, therefore they have no need of the assistance of foreign air.

This seems to indicate that the most essential difference between combustible matters and those which are not so, consists in the latter containing only a few or none of the light, ethereal, and oily matters susceptible of an expansive motion, or, at least, if they contain them, that they are fixed, so that they cannot exercise their volatility whenever the force of the fire is not strong enough to surmount the force of adhesion which retains them united to the fixed parts of matter. It may be said that this induction is confirmed by a number of observations well known to chemists; but what appears to be less so, and which, nevertheless, is a necessary consequence of it, is, that all matter may become volatile when the expansive force of the fire can be rendered superior to the attractive force which holds the parts of matter united; for though to produce a fire sufficiently strong it may require better constructed mirrors than any at present known, yet we are certain that fixity is only a relative quality, and that there is no matter absolutely so, since heat dilates the most fixed bodies. Now is not this dilation the index of a beginning separation, that may be augmented with a degree of heat to fusion, and with a still greater heat to volatilisation?