The quantity of fowl and eggs laid in the cliffs in great abundance. In Nova Zembla they found no beast but bears and foxes, whereof the bears gave over to be seen about September, and then the foxes began.1 Meat will keep from putrifying longer in frosty weather, than at other times. In Iceland they keep fish by exposing it to the cold from putrifying without salt. The nature of man endureth the colds in the countries of Scricfinnia, Biarmia, Lappia, Iceland, Gronland; and that not by perpetual keeping in in stoves in the winter time as they do in Russia, but contrariwise their chief fairs and intercourse is written to be in the winter, because the ice evens and levelleth the passages of waters, plashes, &c. 2 A thaw after a frost doth greatly rot and mellow the ground. Extreme cold hurteth the eyes and causes blindness in many beasts, as is reported. The cold maketh any solid substance, as wood, stone, metal, put to the flesh to cleave to it and to pull the flesh after it, and so put to any cloth that is moist. Cold maketh the pilage of beasts more thick and long, as foxes of Muscovy, sables, &c. Cold maketh the pilage of most beasts incline to grayness or whiteness, as foxes, bears, and so the plumage of fowls, and maketh also the crests of cocks and their feet white, as is reported. Extreme colds will make nails leap out of the walls and out of locks and the like. Extreme cold maketh leather to be stiff like horn. In frosty weather the stars appear clearest and most sparkling. In the change from frost to open weather or from open. weather to frosts, commonly great mists. In extreme colds any thing never so little which arresteth the air maketh it to congeal; as we see in cobwebs in windows, which is one of the least and weakest thrids that is and yet drops gather about it like chains of pearl. "Before the sun began to decline we saw no foxes, and then the bears used to go from us."-Hackl. Soc. 1853, p. 120. 2 even in MS. 3 Qu. whether lockes or lockers. qu. So in frosts, the inside of glass windows gathereth a dew; if not more without. Qu. Whether the sweating of marble and stones be in frost or towards rain. Oil in time of frost gathereth to a substance as of tallow, and it is said to sparkle some time so as it giveth a light in the dark. The countries which lie covered with snow have a hastier maturation of all grain than in other countries, all being within three months or thereabouts. Qu. It is said that compositions of honey, as mead1 do ripen and are most pleasant in the great colds. The frosts with us are casual and not tied to any months, so as they are not merely caused by the recess of the sun, but mixed with some inferior causes. In the inlands of the northern countries as in Russia the weather for the three or four months of November, December, January, February, is constant, vt. clear and perpetual frost without snows or rains. There is nothing in our region, which, by approach of a matter hot, will not take heat by transition or excitation. There is nothing hot here with us but is in a kind of consumption if it carry heat in itself; for all fired things are ready to consume, chafed things are ready to fire, and the heat of men's bodies needeth aliment to restore. The transition of heat is without any imparting of substance, and yet remaineth after the body heated is withdrawn; for it is not like smells, for they leave some airs or parts; not like light, for that abideth not when the first body is removed; not unlike to the motion of the loadstone, which is lent without adhesion of substance, for if the iron be filed where it was rubbed, yet it will draw or turn.2 1 meth in MS. 2 On the back of the MS. is written in Bacon's hand Calor et Frigus And below this again he has written first in a clear and careful hand the word new, and afterwards in a hurried and careless hand the word Vetus. PREFACE TO THE HISTORIA SONI ET AUDITUS. THE following fragment was first published by Dr. Rawley in 1688, among the Opuscula Philosophica; and as he does not mention it among the works composed by Bacon during the last five years of his life, we may conclude that it was written before the Sylva Sylvarum. It may have been the commencement of the "Tables de Sono" which, as we learn from the Commentarius Solutus, he was preparing in the summer of 1608. If so, it must have been meant for the second in the series, viz. Sylva, sive Carta Mater; whence its second title, "Sylva Soni et auditûs ;" and had it been proceeded with, the several tables-tabula essentiæ et præsentiæ, tabula absentiæ in proximo, tabula graduum, &c.-would have followed in order. As far as it goes however, it must be classed among the rough collections, not yet reduced to order for the use of the understanding, and appears to aim at precisely the same object as the investigation concerning Sound which occupies the greater part of the second and third centuries of the Sylva Sylvarum (101-290.); being itself in fact one of the Sylva of which the great Sylva was made up. By that investigation therefore it must be considered as superseded. I do not know that any inference of importance can be drawn from a comparison of the two; but to make the comparison easier, I have referred in the footnotes to the corre |