Heat; More or Less

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 08, 8 October 1908, Page 10

Heat; More or Less

s>3'dney Smith once found the heat so great in England that (said he) 'I found there was nothing left for it but to take off my flesh a-d t;it in my bones.' -According to a cable message, a somewhat similar condition of solar fervency prevailed in England last' week— although (we are told) the temperature did not soar beyond 84 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. But, after all, it it not so much the height of the contractile needle of mercury that matters, as the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Moisture is to sun-heated air pretty much like what mustard is in a bucket of warm water. Ninety degrees in the shade at Torquay or Margate might very easily be more oppressive than 120 at (say) Burke, or Narrabri, or Brcwarrina. or AVoolgoolga, or Jairberoo, or Goomaroo, or Koolymurtic, or Coomooroo, o>- Goondiwirdie, or Yaranyackya. or Yackamoorundie, or any other of the Australian hot places with the cooing or g-irg 1 ;, or tongue-tangling nani's. » " \ A Icmpcraluro of 104— even of 110— in the shade may be quite bearable in Australia. After that, v\ cry warm-blooded thing sa\s to the sun, each in its own articulate or inarticulate way : O, intermit thy wrath ! And on my throbbing temples, potent thus, Beam not so fierce ! ' Recounting the story of Captain Slurl\s e.vp, dition of 1844 Sutherland, in his History of Australia ( PP . ,51, 51 . 2 ) f tells how the sun in the summer of that \<>ar toasted the vast plains of the mterior of the great lone continent. The temperature reached at limes 130 degrees in the shade; 'the earth seemed to burn like plates of metal ; it split the hoofs of the horses • it torched the shoes and the feel of the men. . They were' unable to write, as the ink dried at once on their pens- their combs split; their nails became brittle and readily broke- and if they touched a piece of melal, it blistered their fingers. In their extremity they dug an underground room, deep.' enough to be beyond the dreadful furnace-glow above. Here they passed many a long day, as month after month pa.sed without a shower of rain. But even these high temperniines do not constitute a record; for ue find in Mulhall\D/r//omn-y „/ Statistics ( 4 th cd., 1899, p. 77 fj the following entn : 'The greatest heat recorded was ,33, 33 Fahr in the shode al , Professor Erodes obseivation in Central Arabia is 57^ Centigrade, equal to 135J Fahr. in the shnde, while the heat in th» sun was 1,4 Fahr.' The writer of these lines was once upon a time hotly taken up for a statement, made by him in the Irish hcctes.asUcal Record, that the heat in a particular Australian Stae soared *, h.gh ,n a given year as ,64 degrees Fahrenheit m the sun j hs figures were described as 'absurd,' ' impossible and the rest; but the actual temperature officially certified for that year by the Government Astronomer uas not ,64 but 171.5 degrees hi the sun. In the dry, dear atmosphere of the State ,„ question, such a sun-temperature is quite tolerable; with a good dose of mustard ' (that is, of moisture) thrown in, it would be as deadly as rat-bane.