Scientific Intelligence — Meteorology. 401 



fectly covered with snow, and so calculated to deceive the inexpe- 

 rienced eye, that had we been prevented proceeding further, they 

 would doubtless have asserted on our return to England that we had 

 discovered land in this position. This appearance of land was, how- 

 ever, nothing more than the upper part of a cloud, marking, by a 

 well-defined but irregular line, the limit to which vapour can ascend 

 in these latitudes ; below, is vapour in every degree of condensation ; 

 above, the clear cold space which vapour can never attain. It is 

 always near the margin of the ice that these appearances of land 

 are most remarkable and most deceptive. It proved a useful lesson 

 to some of our now hands, who could not be persuaded it was not 

 land until we had actually passed over the place of their baseless 

 mountains. — Sir James C. Ross's Voyage to the Southern Seas^ 

 vol. i. p. 177. 



8. Mild Winters in England. — An interesting communication 

 on this subject, by Colonel Sabine, appears in the Philosophical Ma- 

 gazine. The unusual character of the winter which we have just ex- 

 perienced, in which the mean temperature in December, January, and 

 February exceeded the mean temperature of the same months of 

 1844-45 by an average of 8 degrees, has given rise to the inquiry. 

 The winter which, within Colonel Sabine's recollection, most nearly 

 resembled the present, was that of 1821-1822 ; and undoubtedly the 

 resemblance is in many respects very striking. The extension of 

 the Gulf-stream in that year to the coast of Europe, instead of its 

 terminating, as it usually does, about the meridian of the Azores, 

 has been assigned as a cause adequate, Colonel Sabine believes, to 

 account for the phenomena of that winter. " The warm water of 

 the Gulf-stream spread itself beyond its usual bounds, over a space 

 of ocean which may be roughly estimated as exceeding 600 miles in 

 latitude and 1000 in longitude, carrying with it water several degrees 

 higher than the temperature of the sea in ordinary years in the same 

 parallels." The similarity of the two winters 1821-1822 and 1844- 

 1845 having been shewn, and their agreement in those features in 

 which they differ from ordinary winters. Colonel Sabine says, " it 

 will naturally be asked, what evidence we have to prove or disprove 

 an extension of the Gulf-stream in the present year, similiar to that 

 which took place in 1821. To this it must be replied, that, strange 

 as it may appear, this remarkable phenomenon may take place in any 

 year without our having other knowledge of it than by its eftects, 

 although it occurs at so short a distance from our ports, from whence 

 so many hundred vessels are continually crossing and recrossing the 

 part of the ocean where a few simple observations with the thermo- 

 meter would serve to make it known. History has recorded two 

 instances in which the extension of the Gulf-stream is known to have 

 taken place ; and in both we owe our knowledge of it to the casual 

 observations of an accidental voyage.'* 



