The cause of dew

1341. Various opinions have been broached as to the cause of dew, and it has been attributed to electricity and various other complicated causes; but all the best writers on the subject coincide with the opinion of Dr. Wells, that the coldness of the earth's surface produced by the sudden abstraction of caloric at night condenses the moisture contained in the air, just in the same manner as we see drops of moisture condensed on the outside of a cold decanter when it is brought from an ice-house or cold cellar, into the moist and heated atmosphere of a dining-room.