620 Supposed Connection of Meteoric Phenomena^ 



Europe and the polar basin.* The coincidence may, how- 

 ever, and probably does, only belong to the accumulation of 

 ice and snow. Observation almost establishes this fact : for 

 the diminution of ice in the Greenland seas, however pro- 

 duced, by causing an influx of ice into lower latitudes, might 

 temporar'ily chill, to a limited extent, the European, as it cer- 

 tainly does the American, continent. If the " earthquake" 

 alluded to by the reviewer in the Qiiarterly Review (vii. 71.) 

 should break up the belt of ice round Greenland, or if 

 volcanic heat should melt away the foundations of the rampart, 

 the lower latitudes would become cooler within the sphere 

 of the ice's influence. The popular writer to whom I before 

 alluded actually asserts that this was the case all over Eu- 

 rope and America in the year 1818, in consequence of the 

 breaking up of the ice previous to 1817.f He states, that 

 for two years America, and the whole of Europe as far as 

 Malta, were chilled, and that " in New Orleans the ice was 

 2 in. thick, the ground covered with snow, and the thermo- 

 meter down to 27°; that Etna was unusually loaded with 

 snow, and the whole Continent was visited with unusual storms 

 of wind and torrents of rain ;" and adds, that, " as these phe- 

 nomena have occurred with wind from the westward^ they are 

 everywhere ascribed to the approach and melting of ice in 

 the Atlantic." {Qiiart. Rev., xviii. 147.) It is a certain fact that 

 the year 1816 was a miserably cold and stormy year, and that 

 Etna was not alone in the enjoyment of an unusual mantle ; 

 for Ritter, in his " Beschreihung des Mont Blanc " (p. 1 03.), 

 says, that, on Mont St. Bernard, '' Im Jahre 1816 verging 

 Jceine Woche ohne Schnee im ganzen Jahre " (not a single week 

 passed without snow, throughout the year). (See M. N. i7., 

 vii. 440., note %.) But will this warrant the conclusion of the 

 reviewer. " that the floating and thawing of such vast bodies of 

 ice in alow latitude have been the causes of those extraordinary 

 gales of wind from the west and south-west, accompanied with 

 sleet and snow ; and produced those storms and inundations 

 which have visited not only these islands, but a great part of 

 Europe, during the first three months of the year 1818 ; and 

 that, unfortunately for us, so long as such fields and islands of 



* Mr. Bakewell {Travels^ ii. 30.) has remarked a coincidence in the 

 red snow annually found in the Alps, and on the shores of Baffin's Bay. 

 The same intelligent writer has alluded to evaporation, in both cases, as the 

 main agent of nature in preventing unusual augmentation of snow. (p. 33.) 

 It may be also added, that there is a correspondence in the periodical ad- 

 vancement and retreat of the glaciers, and the increase and diminution of 

 the polar ice. On the effects of the increase of the glaciers, see Quarterly 

 Review, xviii. 205. See also Mr. Brown on Red Snow, M. N. H., VI. 557 . 



f M. Arago says the disruption took place in 1813-14. 



