Professor Schouw's Specimen of Physical Geography. 175 



Paris Inch. Lin. 

 From lat. 44° to 46°, viz. at Orange, Viviers, Lyons, Ville- 



franche, Bourg, and Geneva, - - 32 2.30 



On the northern side: Carlsruhe, ManUeim, Stuttgard, Wurtz- 



burg, Augsburg, and Regensburg, - - 23 6.46 



Zurich, Bern, Lausanne, Peissenberg, and Tegernsee, - 37 6.22 

 And the great St Bernard, the highest station in Europe, has 



an annual fall of no less than - - - 59 2.73 



The fall of rain in the Alps appears to be most on the southern side, 

 much less in the northern than the western, and least of all in an eastern 

 direction. 



There are bxxly four registers of the depth of rain in Scandanavia, from 

 which we can only deduce that much more falls on the west than on the 

 east side. These observations are wholly wanting for the Pyrenees. 



The fourteenth section is an interesting one, on the snow-line. And 

 here we have a variety of authentic observations upon Scandinavia, many of 

 which, we presume, are little known. By a calculation of means from 

 the insulated observations given by Schouw, we obtain the following table: — 



The descent is not quite regular as we ascend northward, for this depends 

 on the part of the chain on which the observations were made ; the snow 

 line being lower on the western than the eastern side by 1000 feet in lat. 

 67°, and 490 in 60°.* This is perhaps not exactly what we might have 

 expected from the greater mean coldness of the eastern side, and our au- 

 thor does not very exphcitly assign the cause. It would, however, appear 

 to be from the greater range of temperature existing on the side most dis- 

 tant from the ocean, subjecting it to a high temperature in summer, which 

 is the main instrument in the reduction of the snow line, notwithstanding 

 the greater intensity of the winter frost. In the Alps the snow-line has 

 been very accurately determined ; on their south declivity, as on Mount 

 Rosa, it is found to be at 9500, while on the north side of the range 

 it is from 8500 to 8200, and in Styria, where it is lowest, at 8000. In the 

 Pyrenees the southern may be taken at 8600, and the northern at 7800.- 



• We suspect a misprint in the memoir where the latter number is called 1400, 

 which is not the difference of the heights as printed in the text, unless 4340, the 

 height of the snow-line on the east side, is a mistake, as very possibly it may be^ 

 for 5340. 



