The Thermometer Habit

If you really want to witness a beantiful and artistie duel of wordson the subject of cold weather, you must pet a man from Northern Vermontand a man f rom Northern New Hampshire to "swap" weather experiments. Sorac objector ■svill at once say, of course, that neither of these men knows as much about eold weather as their more northern neighbor, the C . ïadian. But the. implied inference that the Canadian oould talk more eloquently about low temperatures than the citizens we have designated is not founded on fact. For your Canadian is either so constituted that cold weather is not cold weather to him, or else he is so chilled through by it that he won't talk about it. Hut who ever yet know a Yankee who was not intimately acquainted with all the possibilities of low temperature in his part of the state and was not willing to back the record of his thermometer against that of any other man? And talking about thermometers suggests the question, what do you know about the thermometer's antecedent? Very little, probably. The thermometer, like the weather, is taken as a fact to be grumbled at, perhaps even to be denounced, but to be accepted, nevertheless. Boston has always claiined to turn out the best thermometers, though that claim is vigorously disputed by New York and Baltimore. About seventy years ago an old Scotchman named Pollock began the manufacture of fine thermometers in Boston. Thomas Pool, an Englishman, was a rival to him in the business. Pool had two brothers who came to this city and began to manufacture thermometers. The Pools were all skillful workmen, and they are entitled to the credit of making the first high grade thermometers in this country. Before thermometers were made in this country they were imported from Franco, Gormany and England.and even now great numbers are imported, generally cheai) gradea which can be sold below the price of the domestic article. Tne higher grades of European thermometers are no cheaper or better than the same grades in this country, and so they are not importe .1. That the New Englanders are weather sharps is proved by the fact that more thermometers are sold in New England than in any othep part of the country. In many parts of the west and south a thermometer is rarely seen, the people having little or no interest in the state of the temperature. But the Yankee, especially in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, always wants to look at the thermometer as soon as he gets up, and maybe half a dozen times during the day. The thermometer habit, indeed, is one of the raarked characteristics of the Yankee, and it has upon him much the same stimulating effect that a cocktail has on the average citizen. A f ter his glance at tlie thermometer, hegoes in to breakfast in a state of suppressed though joyous excitement, feeling that there is at least one topic of conversation that is absohitely fresh; for tboügh the weather itself isas old as the world, the record of the thermometer is always 1KMV. The aperture in the tube of a thermometer is srh&llet tl;an the flnesthair And thoutfh it appears to be round it is not; for if it were, the mercury could not be easilv seen. It is, therefore, made flat, and then the glass mag': it so that it seems to be quite largo. To bring it out still more distinctly, a Saker oí Boson recently conceived the idea of bi.cMng the tube with a thin film of white sizing. This de'vice is now generally idopted by the foreign makers. Mercury is generally used in thermometers because it is more regular in its contraction and expansión. It is indeed impossible to make a spirit thermometer that will be as trust .vorthy as one in which mercury is used. In a mercurial thermometer the degree marks are all the same distance apart, because the expansión under all conditions is uniform. But in a spirit thermometer the degrees are wider apart at the top, because the expansión increases at a greater ratio af ter' a certain temperature is reached. Though not so trustworthy. spirit thermometers are necessary, as mercury freezes at 40 degrees below zero. Spirits of wine is generally used, and is colored red so that it wfll be more visible to the eye. In a correct thermometer, the scale is graduated to the requirements of the tubs to which it is fitted, so that every correct thermometer must have a special scale of its own. That is to say, it wouldn't do to put the tube of one thermometer in the frame of another. Of course, in the very cheap grades of thermometers such accurate adjustments are not made, and therefore their records are only approximately correct. The best thermometer tube made will cost about five dollars; but a thermometer may be made to cost almost any price, according to the way in which it is mounted. As every one knows, the Farhenheit scale is that most commonly used in this country. Fahrenheit arbitrarily assumed a limit of cold which he termed zero. This makes the f reezing point 32 degrees above zero, and the boiling point 813 degrees above zero. As a matter of fact, however, in northern latitudes, the temperature in winter frequently falls below the zero point, so that there is no scientific reason why the zero point in the Fahrenheit scale should be where it is. A much more scientific scale is that known as the Centigrade, which marks the point at which water freezes as zero, and divides the space between that and the point at which water boils into one hundred degrees. In the Reaumur scale zero marks the f reezing point, and eighty above zero the boiling point. Many registering theremometers are now used. These instruments mark the highest or lowest temperature reached, as the case may be, so that the weather sharp may return at night feeling assured that the weather can play no pranks without his learning of them. - N. Y. Tribune. - A "Western editor was recently requested to sena his paper to a distant patrón, provided he would take his pay in "trade.' At the end of the year he found that his new Bubscriber was a coiliu maker. Gets the shake - The right hand.