Buffon's Natural History. Volume 10 (of 10) Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. &c

As this matter, heated alone and without any addition, is very difficult to reduce into a mass, as by the fire of a burning mirror we can obtain only very small masses, and as t...

If it be asked, how we can then assert that the heat in summer is 66 times grater than that in winter in our climate? I cannot give a better answer than by referring to the memo...

But since the dew renders plants so susceptible of the spring frost, might we not hope, that from the researches of Messrs. Musschenbroeck and Fay, some inferences may be deduce...

I think I have now demonstrated, that all the little laws of chemical affinities, which appeared so variable and different, are no other than the general laws of attraction, com...

"M. de Fourcy had lately told the world, that the dissolution of gold was thrown down in a blue precipitate by the Prussian alkali, and had placed this circumstance in a table o...

Whether that would or would not be the fact, this however is certain, that to observe the sun, a telescope quite different is required from those that we make use of for the dif...

All matter will become light, for if all coherence were destroyed it would be divided into molecules sufficiently minute, and these molecules, being at liberty, will be determin...

The sharp winter frosts produce, without doubt, many other injuries to trees, and we have remarked many defects, which we might attribute to them with great probability; but, as...

This mirror of three feet diameter burnt strong enough to melt gold, and I was desirous to see how much I should gain by reducing its action to the burning of wood. For this pur...

Salts, bitumen, oil, and the grease of the sea, enter little or none into the composition of the shell; neither does the calcareous stone contain any of those matters; this ston...

That the sun continues immoveable, and regulates the motions of the other globes, is to be ascribed to his magnitude alone. The force of attraction being in proportion to the ma...

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 lig...

While these bullets were making, the thermometer exposed to the open air was at the freezing point, or some degrees below; but in the pit where the bullets were suffered to cool...

Now, the principal cause of fusibility is the facility which the particles of heat find in separating these molecules of full matter from each other; let the sum of the vacuitie...

The deer-kind whose horns are a sort of wood, and of a solid texture, although ruminating, and internally formed like those whose horns are hollow and porous, seem to form a sep...

But I may be asked is this Theory equally as well founded in every point which serves for its basis; is it certain, according to your experiments, that a globe, as large as the...

4. These mirrors furnish the sole means of exactly measuring heat. It is evident that two mirrors, whose luminous images unite, produce double heat in all the points of their su...

With regard to the pacos, though it appears to have some affinities with the sheep, in its wool and habit of body, yet it differs so greatly in every other respect, that this sp...

As in the beginning every species was created, the first individual of each has served for a model to their descendants. The body of each animal or vegetable is a mould, to whic...

Previously to ordering these globes, I exposed to a like degree of fire, a square mass of iron, and another of lead of two inches diameter, and found, by reiterated essays, that...