12 
—SECOND EXTRACT; 
Containing the Account of an Excursion made by Dr. H. 
Mertens, to the summit of the Werstovoi at New Archangel, 
in Norfolk Sound :—from a Letter addressed to a friend at 
St. Petersburg. 
PREFATORY REMARKS BY ADRIAN VON CHAMISSO. 
* Nonrork Sound (called Sitka or Sitcha by the Russians), 
of whose luxuriant vegetation this learned Naturalist here 
displays to our view a striking portrait, is situated in the 
57th degree of north latitude, on the north-west coast of 
America, to the eastward of that extensive gulf formed by 
this part of the continent; which, again, under the 60th 
degree N. lat. stretches in an opposite direction westerly, 
being changed by a great volcanic mountain, and then pro- 
longs itself further W.S.W. to the Peninsula Alaschka and 
the chain of Aleutian Islands. At the west of Norfolk 
Sound, a space of 4000 miles in breadth (calculating 60 to 
each Equatorial degree) extends between the American and 
the opposite Asiatic shore: interrupted only by the above- 
mentioned tongue of land of Alaschka. If we compare the 
lofty forests of Sitcha with the wintry coasts of Kamtschatka, 
where 4° more southerly, at St. Peter and Paul, the birch 
only attempts to rise into a kind of tree, we shall here find 
a confirmation of that law which proves, by comparing the 
climates of Lisbon and Philadelphia, Paris and Quebec, 
England and Labrador, Drontheim and Iceland, that coun- 
tries, situated to the east of the sea, possess a milder tem- 
perature than those which are placed on the west of the 
ocean, This theory fully explains the facts. The sea is 
the great equalizer of temperature: just as the east winds 
always blow between the tropics, so do the westerly winds 
predominate in a higher latitude. These confer on the 
western shores of the continent to which they arrive, wafted 
over a warm sea, a milder winter; and, on the contrary, a 
severer one to those which they reach across a cold and 
