34 THE WEATHER IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 
But as the Gulf Stream runs obliquely across the Atlantic, ice- 
bergs from Baffin’s Bay float down undissolved as low as the 
latitude of Paris, off Newfoundland, before they fall into it. 
So that, far away in the Ocean, from a point westward from 
the Land’s End, to a point northward from Scotland, icebergs 
many or few may be and generally are floating along and melting 
during the early summer months. 
Although the solid iceberg is thus prevented from reaching us, 
still the products of their liquefaction diffused in vapour through- 
out the atmosphere, and the effects of the cold disengaged from 
them, as they melt under the sun and in the warm Gulf Stream, 
are swept over England by the wind, in rain, mist, fog, and chil- 
ling blasts, not only causing winter to linger in the lap of spring 
but also dashing summer. 
To exemplify these effects in our own seasons, we may instance 
the weather of this present year, 1866. 
The swallow came earlier than usual, in mid-April; and it was 
summer weather for a fortnight. The ice that encased Iceland 
broke up, parted, and drifting down into the Gulf Stream 
loaded the Northern atmosphere with mists and cold; the 
winter having been unusually severe in Iceland. 
Throughout May the cold vapours from the North kept 
sweeping over England, till the end of May; when the crop of 
Iceland ice was exhausted, and the atmosphere brightened, and 
through June and early in July great heat prevailed. 
About the middle of July the setting sun went down in a misty 
sky, and high above the sun a halo slightly prismatically 
coloured indicated plainly a mass of vapour over the Atlantic. 
The Great Eastern, dropping the telegraph cable in mid- 
Atlantic, telegraphed to England, then parched and glowing in 
the sun, that the ship was in the midst of cold blasts and torrents 
of rain; ships off Cape Race fell in with large icebergs, and a few 
days after high winds and chilling rain from the west prevailed 
in England and Western Europe for a month. 
Such being the history of the last spring and summer, and such 
the undoubted cause of it, it is difficult to persuade one’s self that 
