ILLUSTRATIONS (18). CLIMATE OF AMERICA. 105 



winter temperatures given above, suffices to show that a true 

 insular climate prevails on and near the western coasts ; whilst 

 the winter cold is less considerable than in the western part 

 of the old continent, the summers are much cooler. This 

 contrast is made most apparent when we compare the mouth 

 of the Oregon with Forts Snelling and Howard, and the Coun- 

 cil Bluffs in the interior of the Mississippi and Missouri basin, 

 (44° — 46° north lat.,) where, to speak with Buffon, we find 

 an excessive or true continental climate, — a winter cold, which 

 on some days is —32° or even — 37° Fahr., followed by a mean 

 summers heat, which rises to 69° and 71°.4 Fahr. 



(19) p. 8. — "As if America had emerged later from the 



chaotic covering of waters." 



The acute natural inquirer Benjamin Smith Barton, ex- 

 presses himself thus accurately :* — " I cannot but deem it 

 a puerile supposition, unsupported by the evidence of nature, 

 that a great part of America has probably later emerged from 

 the bosom of the ocean than the other continents." I have 

 already elsewhere treated of this subject in a memoir on the 

 primitive nations of America :f — "The remark has been too 

 frequently made by authors of general and well-attested merit 

 that America was in every sense of the word a new continent. 

 The luxuriance of vegetation, the vast mass of waters in the 

 rivers, and the continued activity of great volcanoes, confirm 

 the fact (say these writers,) that the still agitated and humid 

 earth is in a condition approximating more closely to the 

 chaotic primordial state of our planet than the old continent. 

 Such ideas appeared to me, long before my travels in those 

 regions, no less unphilosophical than at variance with gene- 

 rally acknowledged physical laws. These imaginary repre- 

 sentations of an earlier age and a want of repose, and of the 

 increase of dryness and inertia with the increased age of our 

 globe, could only have been framed by those who seek to 

 discover striking contrasts between the two hemispheres, and 

 who do not endeavour to consider the construction of our ter- 

 restrial planet from one grand and general point of view. Are 

 we to regard the southern as more recent than the northern 

 part of Italy, simply because the former is almost constantly 

 disturbed by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions? How 



* Fragments of the Nat. Hist, of Pennsylvania, P. I., p. 4. 

 t See Neue Berlinische Monatschrift, Bd. xv., 1806, § 190. 



