Volume 1

The works of John Hunter / edited by James F. Palmer.

Date:
1835-37
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of John Hunter / edited by James F. Palmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    324/678 (page 294)
    On the Effects of Climate.—By climate we mean that state of the atmo- sphere which is peculiar to any particular part. Climates vary as much as anything in nature. Their difference may be said to arise chiefly from the influence of the sun, from their moisture or dryness, which will de- pend partly on the shape of our globe and its oblique direction with regard to the sun, and also from the nature of the surface, whether hilly, or flat, or woody. The different seasons are dependent on the form of the earth and its motion round the sun. Between the tropics the vari- ations of seasons are less; still there are kinds of seasons, and the climates are very various. The greatest variety of climate is near the tropics. The world there, being chiefly if not altogether heated by the sun, works very hard to gain as much of its influence as possible; it exposes itself to it as much as possible in every direction. The air of the equator is very different from that of the poles; few can live in the climate of the poles, either animals or vegetables, and even of those which can live many become torpid during the winter. It is wonderful, considering the necessity of heat to animalization and vegetation, and how partial Nature has been in the distribution of it, how both these processes go on so well as they do* *. Nature, however, has been obliged to adapt animals to their different climates as well as vegetables, except the bramble, which lives between the tropics and at the poles. Some animals become torpid during the cold, others even of the same order do not; this seems to be because the food of the first is not to be found during that season: so Nature formed them either animals of passage, as some birds; others she constituted so as to become torpid. Animals of passage, however, seem to have their peculiar climate ; fish, which wander more than most animals, have their climate, and the general cause of their moving south is for the purpose of propagation. So herrings come from the North Pole to the coasts of Europe and America, for no other purpose than to lay their spawn. Quadrupeds seem the best formed for variations of climate, though their heat is more stationary. There are exceptions, as the dormouse, bat, &c.; but men, dogs, deer, horses, &c. live tolerably well, though not without disease, know a gentleman who boiled some honeycomb two years old, and after extracting ail the sweet matter, threw the remains into a stable, which was soon filled with bees. Body lice have appeared on clothes which had been immersed in boiling water. Spal- lanzani found long ebullition in the open air favourable to the appearance of the animal- cules of vegetable infusions; and the application of great heat in close vessels, although it prevented the appearance of a larger kind of animalcule, did not that of a smaller. —Elliotson’s Pliys., p. 246. See note, p. 2S4.] * [Cold, however, interrupts the growth and nutrition of organized bodies, as may be seen in the short stature and small size of the Greenlanders, Laplanders, Esquimaux, &c., as well as in all the plants and animals of cold and mountainous regions.]