Thus the nurse in the tragedy, In garments thin doth Niobe's children fold, And sometimes heats and sometimes cools the babes.
The Germans indeed make use of clothes only against the cold, the Ethiopians only against the heat; but they are useful to us upon both accounts.

Why therefore should we rather say the clothes are hot, because they cause heat, than cold, because they cause cold?
Nay, if we must be tried by sense, it will be found that they are more cold than hot.

For at the first putting on of a coat it is cold, and so is our bed when we lie down; but afterwards they grow hot with the heat of our bodies, because they both keep in the heat and keep out the cold.
Indeed, feverish persons and others that have a violent heat upon them often change their clothes, because they perceive that fresh ones at the first putting on are much colder; but within a very little time their bodies make them as hot as the others.

In like manner, as a garment heated makes us hot, so a covering cooled keeps snow cold.

Now that which causes this cold is the continual emanations of a subtile spirit the snow has in it, which spirit, as long as it remains in the snow, keeps it compact and close; but, after once it is gone, the snow melts and dissolves into water, and instantly loses its whiteness, occasioned by a mixture of this spirit with a frothy moisture.