1456 
As a first result of the presence of this water they consider the 
well-known distribution of atmospherical pressure and corresponding 
air-cireulation; and this is a factor of far greater importance. 
This pressure-distribution gives rise to the permanent leeland-Faröer 
low and southwesterly winds are predominant over the greater 
part of Europe. 
The air transported by these winds being relatively warm and 
highly-saturated, keeps up the once existing pressure-distribution and 
the type of weather will show a certain stability. 
The northwesterly winds in the rear of the depressions, being 
very coid in Siberia and off the American coast, are however not 
accompanied by such sharp temperaturefalls on this side of the 
ocean, as, before reaching the European continent, they travelled 
over relatively warm water. 
Society experiencing in all its stages the influence of severe or 
mild winters, it is not astonishing, that it has been tried more than 
once, to investigate the possibility of making a prognostication about 
the coming winter. 
SaBINE*) was among the first that took an interest in this question. 
His attention was drawn by the remarkably mild winters of 
1776—1777 and 1821 —1822. In the autumn of 1776 FRANKLIN 
crossed the Atlantic; in January 1822 SapiNe himself sailed as a 
naval officer in the Iphigenia to the Cape Verde Islands and by 
these voyages he got at his disposal observations about the water- 
temperature of a part of the Ocean between the Azores, the Cape 
Verde Islands and England’s South-coast. 
These observations generally showed a rather high watertempera- 
ture; the positive departures from the mean ranging between 3°.3 
and 5°.0 C. 
The mean obtained in 1825 agrees within 0°.1 C. with the one 
we determined in 1915; but the fluctuations calculated for January 
of every year over the period 1898—1915 are small, the maximum 
not exceeding + 0°.56 C. and those small fluctuations furnish us 
with other facts, than the rather exaggerated deviations found 
by SABINE. 
In both cases the scanty observations which Sapine had at his 
disposal originated from one ship and in our opinion it is owing 
to this lack of material that he found these large departures. 
When we consider single observations out of the great mass we 
!) Lr. Cor. SABINE. On the cause of remarkably Mild Winters which occasionally 
occur in England. 
Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science. Vol XXVIII 1846, p. 317. 
