Note 53 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
Ammianus Marcellinus ascribes the longevity and robust health of mountaineers to their exposure to the dews of night. Dew was employed by the alchemists in their experiments on the solution of gold. The ladies of old collected the “celestial wash,” which they imagined had the virtue of preserving their fine forms, by exposing heaps of wool to the influences of night radiation. It was supposed that the lean features of the grasshopper arose from that insect feeding entirely on dew: “Dumque thymo pascentur apes, dum rore cicadæ,” Virgil, Eclog.
See some curious remarks by Boyle, On the Power of Dew in Working on Solid Bodies: Works of the Honourable R. Boyle, vol. v. p. 121. 1744.