526 COSMOS. 



iiigher summtr tomperatiire of the remainder of the continent 

 of France, are likewise manifested, in some degree, between 

 Europe and the great continent of Asia, of which the former 

 may be considered to constitute the western peninsula. Eu- 

 rope owes its milder climate, in the first place, to its position 

 with respect to Africa, whose wide extent of tropical land is 

 favorable to the ascending current, while the equatorial region 

 to the south of Asia is almost wholly oceanic ; and next to its 

 deeply-articulated configuration, to the vicinity of the ocean 

 on its western shores ; and, lastly, to the existence of an open 

 sea, which bounds its northern confines. Europe would there- 

 fore become colder* if Africa were to be overflowed by the 

 ocean ; or if the mythical Atlantis were to arise and connect 

 Europe with North America ; or if the Gulf Stream were no 

 longer to difiuse the warming influence of its waters into thp 

 North Sea ; or if, finally, another mass of solid land should be 

 upheaved by volcanic action, and interposed between the 

 Scandinavian peninsula and Spitzbergen. If we observe that 

 in Europe the mean annual temperature falls as we proceed, 

 from west to east, under the same parallel of latitude, from 

 the Atlantic shores of France through Germany, Poland, and 

 Russia, toward the Uralian Mountains, the main cause of this 

 phenomenon of increasing cold must be sought in the form of 

 the continent (which becomes less indented, and wider, and 

 more compact as we advance), in the increasing distance from 

 seas, and in the diminished influence of westerly winds. Be- 

 yond the Uralian Mountains these winds are converted into 

 cool land-winds, blowing over extended tracts covered with 

 ice and snow. The cold of western Siberia is to be ascribed 

 to these relations of configuration and atmospheric currents, 

 and not — as Hippocrates and Trogus Pompeius, and even cele- 

 brated travelers of the eighteenth century conjectured — to the 

 great elevation of the soil above the level of the sea.f 



If we pass from the differences of temperature manifested in 

 the plains to the inequalities of the polyhedric form of the sur- 

 face of our planet, we shall have to consider mountains either 

 in relation to their influence on the climate of neiuhborinw 



* See my memoir. Ueher die Havpl-Ursachen der Temperaturvev' 

 sckiedenkeii auf der Erdoberjidche, in the Ahhandl. der Akad. der Wii" 

 sensch. Z7i Berlin von dem Jnhr 1827, s. 311. 



t The general level of Siberia, from Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Baniaul, 

 from the Altai Mountains to the Polar Sea, is not so high as that of 

 Manheim and Dresden ; indeed, Irkutsk, fur to the east of the Jenisei. 

 is only 1330 feet above tlie le\ol of the sea, or about one third lowo/ 

 tlian Munich. 



