when his own hand has been treated in this way, he has found the button unmistakeably hot.
Heat a species of Motion.
49. For a long time this appearance of heat by friction or percussion was regarded as inexplicable, because it was believed that heat was a kind of matter, and it was difficult to understand where all this heat came from. The partisans of the material hypothesis, no doubt, ventured to suggest that in such processes heat might be drawn from the neighbouring bodies, so that the Caloric (which was the name given to the imaginary substance of heat) was squeezed or rubbed out of them, according as the process was percussion or friction. But this was regarded by many as no explanation, even before Sir Humphry Davy, about the end of last century, clearly showed it to be untenable.
50. Davy's experiments consisted in rubbing together two pieces of ice until it was found that both were nearly melted, and he varied the conditions of his experiments in such a manner as to show that the heat produced in this case could not be abstracted from the neighbouring bodies.
51. Let us pause to consider the alternatives to which we are driven by this experiment. If we still choose to regard heat as a substance, since this has not teen taken from the surrounding bodies, it must necessarily have been created in the process of friction. But if we choose
