WEAR WHITE CLOTHES IN HOT WEATHER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XVIII, 31 October 1896, Page 573

WEAR WHITE CLOTHES IN HOT WEATHER.

White clothes are the only safe things to wear during the hot summer season,’ says Weather Observer Dunn in the New York Journal. ‘ Ever since I came to this town to live I have been marvelling at the hot, stuffy, utterly absurd fashion in which New York men of all classes choose to array themselves during the dog-day period, which here lasts sometimes for a good four months. It can’t be possible that they are all complaisant enough to believe that this is a cool town in the summer time. From the 15th June to the 15th of September, and often for an even longer time, New York is ordinarily one of the very hottest cities on the globe—hot, I mean, in the most uncomfortable sense. ‘ And yet, notwithstanding all this. New York men have continued to punish themselves very much as though they were undergoing a perpetual penance for their sins, by sweltering in clothing that actually appears to be especially designed for the attraction, absorption, and preservation of heat. This summer, however, I notice that the sensible white duck suit of the tropics is beginning to make its way. I rejoice. Let the good work go. ‘ls it, then, true that the men of New York are so vain ?’ asked a Cuban gentleman, on a visit to New York, the other day. * Black clothes in this furnace heat ! Why, if a man, during the hot season in Cuba, in Mexico, or in any of the countries of Central or South America were to appear upon the streets in mid-day attired in a costume of that sort, he would be immediately taken in hand by his friends. They would question his sanity.’ * I think I shall be doing an actual charity while I am here this summer by endeavouring to make proselytes for the white duck suit. You notice the suit I have on. I had it made in Havana for the equivalent of [[seven

American dollars. Pretty fair fit, is it not ? Looks at least half-way respectable, doesn’t it? Thanks. Well, this suit is made of fine, light, close-grained, strong linen duck, and although I am told that this is the hottest day of the year thus far, I will venture to say that I am the coolest man in New York at the present moment. This is not due to the fact that I was born and reared in a tropical climate, for I have always felt the heat considerably more than my people ordinarily do, and the heat here just now is, I must admit, rather intense. It is due, however, to the fact that I am dressed for the weather. Every child knows that anything white in the line of textures dispels heat, whether it be a white canvas tent or a white coat. On the contrary, black is a very magnet to attract heat, and when a piece of black cloth has once absorbed heat, which it does very rapidly and in almost incredible quantities, it holds it for a remarkably long time. The heat once absorbed by a piece of black cloth passes away proportionately as slowly as the heat from a piece of steel taken from the forge and allowed to cool by the action of the air, without being placed in water. This duck suitattracts only a minimum quantity of heat, and what little it does absorb it quickly casts off.’ In substantiating this statement of the Cuban for the benefit of the Journal man, ‘Farmer’ Dunn made a curious experiment. He took two perfectly registering thermometers and placed them side by side in the sun in one of the windows or portholes of his eyrie. In something over a minute both thermometers, from a temperature of 85 degrees, which they registered in the comparative coolness of Mr Dunn’s room before being placed under the rays of thesun, indicated a temperature of 96 degrees. Mr Dunn then snipped from the black cover which he throws over his camera in focussing the lens a small piece of the cloth. He bound this over the bulb of one of the thermometers, and around the bulb of the other thermometer he tied a piece of ordinary white

cotton. Then he again placed both thermometers in the sun. Inside of three minutes the thermometer covered with the piece of black cloth showed a temperature of 107 degrees, while the thermometer with the bit of white cotton over its bulb remained stationary at the temperature which it had previously exhibited in the sun —96 degrees. ‘This experiment,’ commented Mr Dunn, ‘ shows that black is a vastly more effective absorber and retainer of heat than white or any other colour. On extremely hot days an experiment such as I have just made will show a difference between the black and white bound thermometers of from 20 to 40 degrees, and when both the thermometers are placed in the shade the heat of the one covered with the black cloth will subside much less rapidly than the heat of that covered by the white cloth. The thickness of the cloth makes hardly any appreciable difference in the experiment, which anyone may try and test to his own satisfaction. Therefore, if you dress two men in duck suits of exactly the same weight and texture, only one of them dyed black, the man in the blackdyed duck suit will be from 20 to 40 degrees hotter under the rays of the sun than the man dressed in the white duck suit.’