Temperature of the Globe. 381 



75° N. Lat. ; and they have, in this arduous task, displayed a 

 perseverance, of whicli we find hardly a parallel instance in the 

 history of human exertions and struggles against the elements. 

 Captain Wcddell has recently destroyed the ancient prejudice, 

 sanctioned by Cook''s illustrious name, that the South Pole is, on 

 account of a more extended mass of ice, less accessible than the 

 NcM'th Pole. The discovery of a new archipelago to the SSE. 

 of Terra del Fuego, has led to an expedition in which Captain 

 Weddell found a sea completely free from ice, under the 74° 

 Lat. (far beyond two solitary islands discovered by the Russian 

 Captain Billinghausen.) 



In turning to the temperate zone, we find a great many points 

 where the average temperature, which hitherto was considered to 

 be invariable, has been measured. Various astronomers in New 

 Holland, and on the foot of the Indian Himalaya, Catholic and 

 Protestant missionaries at Macao, in Van Diemen's Land, and in 

 the Sandwich Islands, have furnished us with new facts towards 

 comparing the northern and southern, the eastern and western 

 hemispheres, in the torrid and temperate zones, consequently 

 those parts of the glofbe which are most abundant in water, as 

 well as those which are most abundant in land. In the same 

 manner, the proportion of heat under the line, and in both the 

 tropics, has been determined. These points, as ascertained in 

 numbers, are particularly important as fixed points, because they 

 may, like the zone of the warmest sea- water, (between 84° and 

 87° Fah. ; 23° and 24° 5' B,), in future ages serve to determine 

 the much disputed variability of the temperature of our planet. 



It is necessary to mention here, that we have been long in 

 want of climatological determinations in the most southern parts 

 of the temperate zones, between the 28° and 30° lat. This part 

 of the world forms as it were an intermediate link between the 

 climate of Palms, and that region in which, according to the 

 tradition of the east, mankind, along the Mediterranean, in 

 Asia Minor, and Persia, first awoke to intellectual develope- 

 raent, to mild manners, and to taste in the cultivation of the 

 JHTts. The observations of Niebuhr, Nouet, and Coutel in 

 Egypt, those of my unfortunate friend Ritchie in the Oasis of 

 Murzuk, could, on account of local circumstances, only lead to 



