426 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



remembered. In January, for instance (4?th and 5th), the 

 snow lay deep upon the ground at Newhaven, " the air was 

 quite calm, with a bright sun," yet the thermometer stood as 

 low as 23° below zero at sun-rise on Jan. 5., never rising dur- 

 ing that or the preceding day above zero; the lowest known 

 cold before this year being in Jan. 1 780, at — 19°. At Hartford, 

 the thermometer was — 27°, and at one house in Newhaven 

 at — 26*5°. [Silliman's American Journal, P. S. vol. 27«, Jan. 

 1835.] The weather in Canada has also been intensely cold 

 and severe. But, although the American continent has been 

 chilled to a degree almost unprecedented in the annals of his- 

 tory, the cold there has been, as in Europe, in some degree 

 partial. For, whilst the temperature of places upon the sea, 

 or near it, ranged from — 4 to — 17, inland it had a range from 

 — 19 to — 43, upon the 4th and 5th January; so that it can 

 hardly be safe to attribute this excessive cold to the ice floating 

 on the Atlantic. It appears, also, that in the western states the 

 cold has not been extremely severe * ; these two facts point 

 therefore to a line of cold between two lines of heat, as alluded 

 to under the head of 1833, in M. N. H., vii. 388. It is my 

 intention to arrange in a tabular form, in a separate paper, 

 the notices of this cold in America in January, 1835, and some 

 previous years ; and I shall, therefore, only observe here, that 

 the records of the month of January, 1767, afford an exact 

 parallel in all the circumstances of temperature, excessive 

 cold followed by "a deluge of warm rain," to that of 1835 

 (S. J. 9 xxviii. 183.); and I may add, to make the reference 

 more correspondent with my previous remarks, that the 

 difference of 1767 and 1835 is 68, being just four times 

 17 years before mentioned as a natural cycle. (VIII. 158.) 

 Hymettus, near Athens, was covered with snow at the same 

 time in 1835 ; and at Odessa the snow lay deep, whilst parhelia 

 and rainbows were daily descried there. It is probable that 

 the cold last winter would have been universal, had not the 

 agents at work produced great modifications in various parts 

 of Europe. In those countries electric phenomena have been 



* At Marietta in Ohio (39° 25' n., 4° 28' w. of Washington), the greatest 

 cold was only 2° above zero on January 5th. On Jan. 25th, the mercury 

 at Dartmouth College was at 8°, 25°, 27° ; at Marietta the same day at 62°. 

 In December they had only li in. of snow, and in January none; so par- 

 tial has been this extreme cold. (See Silliman's Journal, xxvii. 177. and 

 163.) The thermometer at Virginia University was not below +10°. 

 During the whole of this period, the weather to the west of the Alleghany 

 Mountains was quite mild. There was no ice for the ice-houses; and 

 there was a fear lest the supply for 1836 should fail. Generally the climate 

 is much colder to the -west than to the east of this state. (Letter of cor- 

 respondent in Journal of Franklin Institute, xv. 222.) 



