Different Degrees Of Heat Imbibed From The Sun's Rays By Cloths Of

different Colours.



Walk but a quarter of an hour in your garden, when the sun shines,

with a part of your dress white, and a part black; then apply your

hand to them alternately, and you will find a very great difference in

their warmth. The black will be quite hot to the touch, and the white

still cool.



Try to fire paper with a burning-glass; if it be white, you will not

easily burn it; but if you bring the focus to a black spot, or upon

letters, written or printed, the paper will immediately be on fire

under the letters.



Thus, fullers and dyers find black cloths, of equal thickness with

white ones, and hung out equally wet, dry in the sun much sooner than

the white, being more readily heated by the sun's rays. It is the same

before a fire, the heat of which sooner penetrates black stockings

than white ones, and so is apt sooner to burn a man's shins. Also beer

much sooner warms in a black mug set before the fire than a white one,

or in a bright silver tankard. Take a number of little square pieces

of cloth from a tailor's pattern card, of various colours; say black,

deep blue, lighter blue, green, purple, red, yellow, white, and other

colours, or shades of colours; lay them all out upon the snow in a

bright sun-shiny morning; in a few hours, the black being warmed most

by the sun will be sunk so low as to be below the stroke of the sun's

rays; the dark blue almost as low; the lighter blue not quite so much

as the dark; the other colours less, as they are lighter; and the

quite white remain on the surface of the snow, as it will not have

entered it at all.