NOTES.
Note 1, Chap. II., [Page 22].
Whenever the degree of temperature is mentioned in the course of this narrative, it is according to the Centigrade scale, although it is calculated by the Réaumur thermometer, and no other, in Russia. 5° Centigrade are equal to 9° Fahrenheit: but since the freezing point in the Centigrade thermometer is 0, and in the Fahrenheit 32°, in converting one scale into the other, care must be taken to add or deduct this difference in calculating above or below freezing point. It will therefore be seen that when 18° below 0 in the Centigrade scale are reached—a point nearly equivalent to zero in the Fahrenheit thermometer—the latter is quite inadequate to indicate the intense cold of Siberia, where, in certain parts, as at Yakutsk and Tomsk, it is said to reach 58° Centigrade even, in some winters. This temperature would be equivalent to 105° Fahrenheit below freezing point, disregarding the irrational descending scale below this mark, and supposing the graduation to continue instead from freezing point with augmenting numbers. But Gabriel Fahrenheit contrived his thermometer for Dantzig, and evidently not for Siberia; for the lowest point, zero, has no scientific basis, no significance whatever in the phenomena of heat, and represents merely the extreme cold registered at Dantzig in 1709, a degree of cold which must have been surpassed there subsequently by many degrees, and even in Paris by at least 15°, once in the winter of 1871 during the siege, and more than once during the rigorous winter of 1880. We seem to be more attached to this Dantzig thermometer than the Dantzigians themselves, who, probably, have long ago adopted the more rational scale of Réaumur or of Celsius, more rational at least so far as they are graduated each way from freezing point. Perhaps a change may come about when we begin to dine at 18 o’clock instead of 6 p.m.—W. C.
Note 2, Chap. VII., [Page 127].
Siberia, it appears, judging from an account of a correspondent of the Times at Tumen, published November 20th, 1883, is quite un pays de cocagne, so far as provisions are concerned, sparkling champagne of course excepted. The prices of some articles of food at Tumen are given as follows:
“Geese in autumn cost fivepence a pair, and are frozen in numbers to be sent west to Russia and east to Irkutsk; grouse in summer, being a delicacy, cost threepence a pair, and good fish, such as sterlet and nelma, from three-halfpence to twopence-halfpenny per pound. Sheep are scarce and not much eaten, but beef in autumn costs from fifteen to twenty pence the pood, or about a halfpenny per pound.”
In spite of the cheapness of provisions and labour, travelling appears to be, at least to the foreigner, very expensive in Siberia.—W. C.