When my paper on the Conductivity of various Substances was presented to the Society, it was intimated to me on the part of the Council of the Society, that it might be advisable to determine
absolute
instead of
relative
conductivities, the latter being alone attempted in my previous experiments. It has been partly in consequence of this intimation, as well as from the desire to make my investigations the more complete, that I have given my attention to the construction of a calorimeter which might serve for this purpose. The present communication contains a description of this instrument, with the results which it has enabled me to obtain respecting the absolute quantities of heat which emanate from the surfaces of certain substances under given conditions. 1. When a body is placed in atmospheric air (or any gas), the quantity of heat which is lost from its surface in a given time, when its temperature is higher than that of the surrounding medium, will be greater than if it were placed in a vacuum, other conditions remaining unaltered. In the latter case the heat escapes by simple radiation; in the other case a portion of the heat also escapes in consequence of the contact of the air with the surface of the heated body. Dulong and Petit ascertained by a careful series of experiments, the laws according to which the mercury contained in the bulb of a thermometer cools, or those which govern the quantity of heat which escapes from the surface of the containing bulb, when placed in a vacuum, in air, or in several kinds of gases. These experiments were made with the glass bulb naked, and also when it was silvered, so that the laws of radiation which they established were strictly in reference only to surfaces of glass and those of silver. Certain laws were identical in both these cases, and hence it was concluded, though by a limited induction, that the same laws were applicable to all other surfaces. They did not, however, give the
absolute
quantity of heat which, under given circumstances, and in a given time, emanates from the surfaces of the glass or silver with which they experimented. The instrument which I have constructed gives very easily this absolute amount of heat, as I believe, with very approximate accuracy.
Induction of resistance or enhancement to a transplantable murine plasmacytoma by transfer of non-immune leucocytes
