322 Lieut.-Col. Sabine on the Cause of Mild Winters 



It is impossible to read this description of the winter of 

 1821-1822 without being- struck with the many features which 

 it has in common with that of the present year. The excess 

 of heat in both amounted to several degrees, and continued 

 through several months. There were similar floods in many 

 parts of England in the early part and middle of this winter ; 

 and these were not confined to England only, but extended, as 

 in 1821-1822, to many of the rivers of western Europe. The 

 tension of the vapour conveyed to the shores of the British 

 Channel in December, January and February last, was nearly 

 ^rd part greater, as appears by the Greenwich Observations, 

 than in the same months of the preceding year ; although in 

 consequence of the much higher temperature, the humidity of 

 the air, or the ratio of the humidity to saturation, has been 

 less. This was also the case in 1821-1822. We have had 

 an unusual prevalence of westerly and south-westerly winds 

 at the season when they are ordinarily replaced in a much 

 greater proportion by the dry and cold winds which come to 

 us from the interior of the great continents of Europe and 

 Asia. If in the southern parts of Britain, and on the shores 

 of the British Channel, we have been less severely affected by 

 storms and extreme barometrical depressions than was the 

 casein 1821-1822, we may possibly owe the comparative ex- 

 emption to the fact that the excess of heat above the mean 

 has been greater in the winter of 1845-1846 than it was in 

 1821-1822 ; whence we may infer perhaps that the conflict of 

 the opposing currents of the atmosphere has been removed in 

 the present year further to the north and north-east than on 

 the former occasion ; it is at the limits which are reached by 

 the warm and humid current proceeding from the south-west, 

 and in the localities where it encounters the dry and cold 

 stream pressing from the east and north-east, that the greater 

 atmospherical derangements are produced, and these have 

 been experienced in the northern parts of Britain. 



The similarity of the two winters having thus been shown, 

 and specially their agreement in those features in which they 

 differ from ordinary winters, it will naturally be asked, what 

 evidence we have to prove or disprove an extension of the Gulf- 



the mean temperature, but the rain, as if exhausted in the preceding month, 

 fell much below the usual quantity in this. There was not one day on 

 which the frost lasted during the twenty-four hours. 



" ' Serious apprehensions were entertained, lest the wheats, drawn up a9 

 they had been by the warm 1 and moist weather, without the slightest check 

 from frost, should be exhausted by excessive vegetation, and ultimately be 

 more productive in straw than corn. 



"' The month of February, still 5° above the mean temperature, ended a 

 winter which never has been paralleled.'" 



