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UNITED STATES. 271 
' tion as bearing on the subject under consideration. The former of these, 
though it may appear to be less relevant to the question, will be found, 
from the statements and tables quoted, to confirm and elucidate the 
second. An opinion has very long prevailed, and is even now gene- 
rally entertained by those who have not given their attention to 
meteorological subjects, that the summers of very northern countries 
lying within or continguous to the arctic circle, as Norway, parts of 
Sweden and Russia, though short, enjoy a temperature fully equalling, 
or, whilst it lasts, surpassing that of the same season in more southerly 
latitudes. The summers of these countries have almost become pro- 
verbial in popular belief, not for their transitory duration only, but for 
the heat which is supposed to characterize them, yet the researches of 
modern science completely dispel this assumption. The origin of so 
strange a meteorological error it would not perhaps be difficult to ac- 
count for, were this the place for such discussion ; it is sufficient here . 
to observe, that experience fully proves, how, on approaching the poles, 
the mean temperature of summer follows the general law of decrement 
which governs the remaining seasons, though the ratio of diminution is 
smaller than that which obtains for the winter months on the same 
parallel.* 
True it is that the mean temperature of the three summer months in 
London, for instance, is but little above that of the same season at 
Stockholm and St. Petersburgh, (it is not below the summer heat of 
those places, as many imagine); but the cemparison.is here made be- 
twixt a city of western Europe having an Atlantic or ocean and insular 
climate, with two other towns possessing the opposite characteristics, 
in a great degree, of an eastern and continental one, and is of course 
inconclusive of the position assumed. But let the comparison be made 
of the summer heat of London with that of Bergen, or even of Chris- 
tiania (places, like itself, on or near the western coast of Europe, but in 
* The statistics of terrestial temperature seem to shew that the zone of maximum 
su heat is included between the sub-tropical latitudes, comprising a band of 
about six or eight degrees north and south of the two solstitial Soci or from lat. 25 
f thi 
his distance from the e quator is greatest, and his declination diminishes least from 
day to day ; the small o obliqui ty of his rays being fully compensated soie vga 
clouds and Wee pes rain, and by the more sensibly increased duration of his s 
above the hori 
