MR. WILLIAMS ON THE LATE MILD WINTER. 187 



on the west side of my house, and also in the garden of a 

 neighbour. 



Kirwan, who wrote on the climate of England and Ireland about 

 sixty years ago, said the Atlantic Ocean was the great arbiter of 

 our seasons. He considered that the Atlantic Ocean retained five 

 degrees of the warmth given by the Gulf stream by the time it 

 arrived on the western coasts of Ireland, England, and Scotland ; 

 and I fully believe the truth of this observation. Yet it is a most 

 extraordinary thing that almost a century past, when thousands 

 of individuals have kept most accurate weather -journals, I have 

 never met with one recording the temperature of the ocean, at 

 the surface, surrounding Great Britain and Ireland at full tide, 

 in the open sea (not the estuary of a great river). I made a 

 request to the Royal Society to do this some years ago ; the 

 answer was, that the Admiralty was the party to apply to. I did 

 write to the Lords of the Admiralty before the ships were sent 

 some years ago in search of a north-west passage into the Pacific 

 Ocean ; I requested the temperature of the sea at the surface 

 might be recorded ; this was done, but as the ships were con- 

 tinually varying their latitude, the record was of no use to give 

 the information I have so long sought. An accurate observa- 

 tion in the German Ocean, made off the coast of Yorkshire, or 

 a few miles eastward of the Frith of Forth, another at Spithead, 

 Penzance, off Cork, and Isle of Man, in January, February, 

 March, or April, last year and again this year, I feel certain 

 would have given many degrees of temperature higher this 

 winter than last year, 1844-45. The mild winter I have alluded 

 to, of 1821-22, went on witliout frost or any check from cold 

 winds through the months of February, March, April, and May. 

 The whole month of June was the warmest I ever remember ; 

 July also was warm till the 19th. But continual rains then set 

 in at the time of corn harvest, and in August the wlieat in Wor- 

 cester was all spoiled. There were good crops of apples and 

 pears. If I am right in my conjecture, that after a blowing 

 winter, and frequent south-westerly or westerly winds, we have a 

 larger body of warm equatorial water drifted to the north-west of 

 Europe, we shall then find the north-east winds, should they 

 set in in March and April, prove much less cold than last year, 

 when the German Ocean was so much cooled by the melting ice 

 from the Baltic, the German rivers, coast of Norway, &c. There 

 was no ice or snow in the western parts of Russia in 1821-22, 

 and the mildness extended far eastward, where it appears the air 

 got cooled in the northern regions and returned in a cold cur- 

 rent through Greece, Turkey, and the countries to the eastward. 

 Rome also was very cold, and North America. It is an old 

 observation, that when the winter in North America is severe, 



