378 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
is little, if at all, in favour of America, (I speak now of that part 
of it meluding Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, 
and the other maritime states to the northward of these,) whilst 
in abrupt and extreme transitions from heat to cold and the 
reverse, the advantage is unquestionably on our side of the 
Atlantic. 
The much higher temperature of the summer months, from 
May to August inclusive, which prevails over the greater part of 
the United States,* is what chiefly strikes a stranger from central 
Europe on his arrival, but this heat is so unequally distributed, 
that many days in succession may intervene between the spurts . 
of hot weather, which would be reckoned temperate even in our 
own more moderate and equable climate. I have known such 
days to occur during which the sun has shone out uninterruptedly, 
but more commonly on these occasions the sky is either partially 
or wholly overcast (as it frequently is at all times of the year), 
with cumulo-stratus, nimbus, and other dense forms of cloud, or 
else a thin white veil or canopy of stratus, or cirro-stratus comes 
opportunely, after a day or two of broiling weather, to temper by 
its welcome interposition the fervour of the sun's rays. 
There is, perhaps, no subject on which it is more difficult to 
obtain a clear, just, and impartial account than that of the climate 
of any country. Our views of it, as of politics, are sure to be 
more or less distorted by the mirage of prejudice, interest, physical 
constitution, or natural vanity, across which we take them. 
It has been the fashion with a certain cosmopolite class of 
Englishmen to decry their own climate (of the acknowledged 
defects of which I have no wish to become the bigoted defender), 
and to laud that of every other country till they have persuaded 
their own nation and foreigners that we live in a perpetual Cim- 
merian darkness, engendered of fog, damp, and drizzle, which 
* ] say here the greater part, because I shall hope to show in the sequel, that be- 
tween a certain latitude in America, the mean heat of summer actually falls below that 
of the corresponding parallels in Europe, contrary to the commonly received notion 
that the transatlantic summers are as much hotter as the winters are colder, than on 
the same degrees of latitude in the Old World. 
