6 1 8 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena, 



shores ; not considering that, if such could be the cause of 

 warmth in modern Europe, the clearing of the great forests 

 of ancient Europe must have heightened the temperature 

 also.* It has been proved that the climates of Palestine 

 and Rome, and the adjacent countries, have not changed dur- 

 ing the last 3000 years ; and, therefore, as the west and the 

 east have maintained their equilibrium, the recent changes of 

 climate in Europe must be attributed to another cause. That 

 cause I consider to be simply the occasional increase or revival 

 of the volcanic action, which hundreds of extinct craters in 

 France and Germany prove to have been infinitely more 

 active than at present. Be it as it may, Canada can have 

 nothing to do with our prevalent winds, nor with alternations 

 of climate in England. 



3. The third class of writers attribute the cause to the 

 melting of ice in the Atlantic.f As this hypothesis has been 

 received almost generally, and been made the agent of results 

 which I think not referable to it, we must examine it some- 

 what in detail. 



I have made allusion to this as the cause of cold in certain 

 years (p. 300.) ; but it is impossible to allow some of the ar- 

 guments drawn from occurrences of the kind, as stated by a 

 popular writer in the Quarterly Review, to hold good, without 

 refusing the assent of our senses to a contrary conclusion as 

 far as affects the year 1833. 



" During the winter of 1348, the whole coast of Iceland 

 was frozen, so that a horseman might have ridden from cape 

 to cape round the island. Such a circumstance had never 

 occurred before since the country was discovered ; and it seems 

 probable that in this winter the accumulation of ice began, 

 which has blocked up the coast of East Greenland. ( Quarterly 

 Review, vii. 52.) . . . Having resisted the summer, it took root, 

 as it were, along the coast, and has continued to increase, 

 producing effects upon the climate of the north, which we J 



* A Mr. Williams published, in 1806, a work on the climate of Great 

 Britain, in which he attributed our wet summers to the practice of making 

 fences of hawthorn (Cratae^gus Oxyacantha, X.), instead of holly (7Mex 

 -4quif61ium L.). He states that, during the 60 or 70 years preceding the 

 date of his book, the quantity of hawthorn hedges had produced a material 

 effect on the atmosphere. 



•j- Amongst these is M. Arago, who published this theory in the An- 

 nuaire for 1834, and is, it is said, engaged in writing a work on " climate." 



J To show the inconsistencies of reviews, we take the following contra- 

 diction of the statement in the text : — "It is a common, but we believe 

 an erroneous opinion, that the temperature of our climate has regularly been 

 diminishing, and that it is owing to the ice having permanently fixed itself to 

 the shores of East Greenland, which, in consequence, from being once a 

 flourishing colony of Denmark, is now become uninhabitable and unap- 

 proachable. We doubt both the fact and the inference ! " {Quarterly Review, 



