Thermopylae

“ At the battle of Thermopylæ three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians sacrificed their lives for the good of Greece. Every one has praised Leonidas and his Spartans. How many have ever so much as heard of the equally brave Thespians? I do not know of a case other than this of the Thespians, where a gallant body of soldiers has been treated so cruelly by history, as the division which fought the first day under Heth and the third under Pettigrew. I have no personal concern in the fame of these troops, as I belonged to and fought in another division ”

“ Col. Bowie (injured by a fall from the platform the day preceding the assault) is seen lying on a couch. Enter Col. Travis and Col. Crockett.
Bowie.
Hail, brave companions, hail! Thermopylae
Has by your valor been eclipsed to-day.
Oh! that your gallant deeds might have been seen
By the admiring gaze of humanity.
Alas! performed here in the western wild,
They will escape the writer's graphic pen!
Yet,—to have saved the land, the rising nation,
That consciousness will ever be your part. ”

“ In 191 they supported Antiochus badly, and by their slackness in the defence of Thermopylae made his position in Greece untenable. Having thus isolated themselves the Aetolians stood at bay behind their walls against the Romans, who refused all compromises, and, after the general surrender in 189, restricted the league to Aetolia proper and assumed control over its foreign relations. In 167 the country suffered severely from the intrigues of a philo-Roman party, which caused a series of judicial murders and the deportation of many patriots to Italy. ”

“ The early history of Phocis remains quite obscure. From the scanty notices of Greek legend it may be gathered that an influx of tribes from the north contributed largely to its population, which was reckoned as Aeolic. It is probable that the country was originally of greater extent, for there was a tradition that the Phocians once owned a strip of land round Daphnus on the sea opposite Euboea, and carried their frontier to Thermopylae; in addition, in early days they controlled the great sanctuary of Delphi. ”

“ In the polar regions, where a rousing stove-fire often fails to thaw the rime-frost on the stove-pipe, the organism of the human body contrives to maintain its blood-heat within half a degree of the normal average, i. e., sometimes at a temperature of 150° above that of the external air. In the tropics the same marvelous organism becomes a refrigerating apparatus, and lowers its temperature as much as thirty degrees below that of the outer atmosphere, which in British India, for instance, has been seen at 132° above zero, or a hundred degrees above the freezing-point. ”

“ The movements of many Protozoa are rendered sluggish by cold, and active by a rise of Temperature up to what we may term the "optimum"; the species becomes sluggish again as the temperature continues to rise to a certain point when the movements are arrested, and the being is said to be in a state of "heat-rigor." Most Protozoa, again, tend to move in an unequally heated medium to the position nearest to their respective optimum temperature. ”

“ The best thermometer we can use to test the character of a climate is the flora and fauna which lived while it prevailed. This is not only the best, but is virtually the only thermometer available when we inquire into the climate of past geological ages. Other evidence is always sophisticated by the fact that we may be attributing to climate what is due to other causes; boulders can be rolled by the sea as well as by sub-glacial streams, and conglomerates can be formed by other agencies than ice. But the biological evidence is unmistakable; cold-blooded reptiles cannot live in icy water ”

“ Numerous non-spore-bearing species remain alive in ice for a prolonged period, and recent experiments with liquid air show that even a temperature of -310° F. for hours does not effectually kill all exposed cells.
Effect of heat. High temperatures, on the other hand, will destroy any form of life, whether in the vegetative or latent stage. The temperature at which the vitality of the cell is lost is known as the thermal death point. This limit is not only dependent upon the nature of the organism, but varies with the time of exposure and the condition in which the heat is applied. ”

“ At death the temperatures of the air and of the moth were equal. These experiments were conducted in air of normal moisture, but when the air was supplied with additional vapour a different result was observed, for then the insect had a higher temperature than that of the air, and its wings did not sink until a body-temperature of 53° was reached, the air being at 49°. This effect is probably brought about by the moisture in the air preventing evaporation of the insect's juices, and so preventing cooling; while the normal metabolism of the insect naturally tends to raise the temperature. ”

“ The most important factor in the environment, as determining distribution, is the temperature of the water, which is probably to be regarded as affecting not so much the adult Mollusca as their ova; for the adult might possibly support life under conditions in which the ova would perish. It appears that a sudden change of temperature is the most effective barrier to distribution, [384] and may bring the range of a species to an almost instantaneous stop, while a very gradual change will allow it to extend its range very widely. ”

“ They placed animals in stoves containing air heated to different degrees of temperature, and noted the effects produced on life by thermic influences. The conclusion from their researches was, that all animals have the power of resisting heat for a certain length of time, and that the duration of resistance varies with the species. Small animals yield after a moderate time to a temperature of 45° to 50° (cent.) . Larger ones endure heat better. Cold-blooded animals and the larva? of insects resist more energetically than warm-blooded animals ”

“ It is, however, a common experience in pickling fish that the warmer the temperature the more rapid the striking through, a difference too great to be accounted for by temperature variations of osmotic pressure. The cell membrane itself must change. Whether any more free permeability caused by warm temperature is permanent after the fish is chilled again is not known, but the question would be well worth investigating. Cold, when in the neighborhood of freezing, also promotes permeability, as has been proved by various experiments. ”

“ A group of physiologists from Columbia University spent nearly 2 months in southern Florida experimenting on reptiles. They determined the rate of rise of body temperatures of large lizards and alligators of all sizes during exposure to the midday sun. As was expected, the smaller the reptile the more rapid the rise in body temperature. Dinosaurs were reptiles so we can make two assumptions: That their physiology was very similar to that of living reptiles; 11 and that the rate of rise of their body temperatures from exposure to the sun would follow the principles found for living reptiles. ”

“ Plants generate but an extremely small quantity of heat, which is to be detected only by delicate experiments; and practically they may be considered as being in this respect like their environment. Aquatic animals rise very little above the surrounding water in temperature: that of the invertebrata being mostly less than a degree above it, and that of fishes not exceeding it by more than two or three degrees, save in the case of some large red-blooded fishes, as the tunny, which exceed it by nearly ten degrees. ”

“ It is well known that marine invertebrate animals are more susceptible of change of temperature than land animals; indeed they may be isothermally arranged with great accuracy. It will, however, be difficult to get naturalists and philosophers to believe that these fragile creatures could possibly exist at the depth of nearly two thousand fathoms below the surface: yet as we know they can bear the pressure of one thousand fathoms, why may they not of two? ”

“ Warm-blooded animals maintain an almost constant temperature in all latitudes and all climates. Thus, in polar regions, man, mammals, and birds, mark only one or two degrees less than they do at the tropics. The mean temperature of birds is 41° (cent.) , and that of mammals 37°. Those animals called cold-blooded produce heat also, though in a less degree; but their temperature follows the variations of that of the surrounding medium, keeping, however, a temperature a few degrees higher than it. In reptiles, this excess varies from 5° to half a degree; in fish and insects, it is still smaller ”

“ Heat transfer between an animal and its environment is a function of the interaction of its body temperature and thermal conductance with various environmental variables (air temperature, wind speed, vapor pressure, and thermal radiation) . When a raccoon is outside its den, its thermal conductance (Cmw) is the only barrier to heat transfer with the external environment. ”

“ Still, a knowledge of the effects of reduction of temperature will be valuable, as affording data by which to judge of the effects and probable duration of visitations of insects, and of the nature of the precautionary measures to be adopted. In an experiment of alternate temperature from 40° to 65° tried for five days on a bee, the creature at last 'ceased to give any sign of vitality.'
The influence of heat appears to be much more rapid than that of cold: a fly exposed to a temperature of 120°, died in two or three minutes ”

“ This heat keeps the bodies of birds, quadrupeds, and human beings, which are all very active in their automatic movements, at a much higher temperature than the surrounding medium; while reptiles, fishes, and other "cold-blooded" creatures, having much less energetic motions of the heart and lungs—which of course betokens much less oxidation of food-stuffs—have bodies comparatively little different in warmth from the air or water about them. We thus see in part why it was that the anaconda and the desert-snail could go so long without food ”

“ If one should place a delicate thermopile below the red color, it at once reports heat, although the eye sees nothing there. The beautiful colors of the spectrum flash their light into the eye, raise the temperature of the thermometer and affect chemical transformations, while, still more wonderful, the dark lines above the violet, though unseen and not indicated by the thermopile, act upon the sensitized plate of the photographer with decided chemical force. Thus changes in vibrations as to rapidity, length and direction make changes in the resulting sensations. ”

“ Even at this stage a thermometer immersed in the water will show that the boiling-point is not reached. As the temperature rises, these blisters rise higher and higher, become more and more nearly spherical, finally quite so, then detach themselves and rise toward the surface; but the first that make this venture perish in the attempt—they gradually collapse as they rise,-and vanish before reaching the surface. The thermometer now shows that the boiling-point is nearly reached, but not quite. Presently the bubbles rise completely to the surface and break there. ”

“ Consequently, if a thermopile be so placed as to receive these various rays, and their energy be measured by its absorption on the face of the pile, each one would be found to heat it, the longer waves more than the shorter ones, simply because the amplitude is greater, but for no other reason, for it is possible, and in certain cases is the fact, that a short wave has as much or more energy than a longer one. ”

“ By this experiment I ascertained that a vegetable can endure, without hurting it, 130 degrees of heat, according to the degrees on Fahrenheit’s thermometer. I am inclined to think that no animal is able to endure such a heat and live. Undoubtedly, insects increase rapidly in hot weather in the open air, especially on the peach tree, and on other trees, against warm walls, both in the spring and summer months; and they increase most rapidly in dry weather; but the heat in the open air against walls seldom rises to 100 degrees. ”

“ Soil scientists and other academics that sometimes seem to measure their stature on how well they can baffle the average person by using unfamiliar words for ordinary notions call these types of organisms thermophiles, a Latin word that simply means "heat lovers."
Compost piles can get remarkably hot. Since thermophilic microorganisms and fungi generate the very heat they require to accelerate their activities and as the ambient temperature increases generate even more heat, the ultimate temperature is reached when the pile gets so hot that even thermophilic organisms begin to die off. ”

“ The organism that falls below the minimum of temperature is said to be stiff with cold, while the organism that rises above the maximum is stiff with heat.
The heat-stimulus acts on inorganic as well as organic bodies, like the light-stimulus. The law holds good in both cases that higher temperatures increase sensation, while lower ones paralyze it. There is a minimum, an optimum, and a maximum, for many chemical and physical processes in the inorganic world. As far as the melting effect of water is concerned, freezing is the minimum of the heat stimulus and boiling the maximum. ”

“ Temperature has an essential influence over the actions of muscles, but it is not necessary that the same temperature should subsist in all muscles during their actions; neither is it essential that all the muscular parts of the same animal should be of uniform temperatures for the due performance of the motive functions.
It appears that all the classes of animals are endowed with some power of producing thermometrical heat, since it has been so established in the amphibia, pisces, vermes, and insecta, by Mr. ”