Camping and woodcraft - Scoutmastercg.com

•126 CAMPING AND WOODCRAF-lizedfabric, but all such " skins to keep heat in " aretotal failures. The vapor from one's body musthave an outlet or a man vrill chill, to say nothing ofother unpleasant consequences.The degree of insulation afforded by confinedair may be judged roughly by a few comparisons.Here is a pack cloth of close-woven cotton duck;there is a cotton bed comforter of the same spreadand weight, but thicker, of course. Size, weights,and materials are the same, yet what a difference inwarmth! Well, it is just the enclosed air thatmakes the comforter "comfy," and lack of it thatleaves the canvas cold as a covering. Similarly, athree-pound comforter filled with lamb's wool battingisas warm as a five-pound all-wool blanket, becauseit holds more dead air. Down filling is stillwarmer than wool, being fluffier, and its elasticitykeeps it so — it does not mat from pressure.After a cotton comforter has been used a longtime, or kept tightly rolled up, its batting becomesmatted down and then the cover is no warmer thana quilt of equal weight. Quilts — ugh! In thedank bedroom of a backwoods cabin, where the" kivvers " were heirlooms, but seldom had beenaired, I have heaped those quilts on me till theirvery weight made my bones ache, and still shiveredmiserably through the long winter night.Batting of any sort (but cotton the worst) willalso mat from wet, and then its elasticity is gone.Water, moreover, is a good conductor of heat, andso a bed covering of any kind is cold when it is wet.Note this, also, that the weight of one's bodypresses out a good deal of air from the beddingunder him. Moreover, earth, being a good conductor, draws off one's animal heat faster than th^air does. So, when sleeping on the ground, on&needs more bedding underneath than over him —a cold, hard fact that some designers of sleepingbags have unaccountably overlooked. A bag withtwo thicknesses of blanket over the sleeper and only