On supporting science journalism
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Professor Piazza Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, in his interesting account of a recent scientific expedition made by him to the Peak of Teneriffe, has set at rest the vexed question of the heat of the moonlight. He Bays that his thermometrical instruments were sensibly affected by the moon's rays, even at the lowest of two stations occupied by him at different elevations. In tropical climates meat which is exposed to the moonlight rapidly becomes putrid ; and in the Indies, the negroes who will lie sweltering and unoovered beneath the full glare of a tropical sun, carefully muffle their heads and faces when exposed to the moonbeams, which they believe will cause swelling and distortion of the features, and sometimes even blindness.
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