156 NOTICES OF THE MEETINGS [March 19, 
The Climate is more arctic than temperate, although the lake is 
but little to the north of Milan. It is much colder than Sikla in 
Russian America, 10° further north; because the latter is screened 
from polar winds. Winter begins in the middle of October by a 
succession of gales and snow storms; and from November till 
May the ground is covered with close packed, granular snow: 
but the earth is not frezen deep, so that, in spring, before all the 
snow is gone, the forest is in leaf. The annual range of the 
thermometer is 125° F. the mean 42° 14’ F., the lower extreme 
— 31°, the higher 94°; all these observations having been made by 
good observers, with excellent instruments. August is the hottest 
month. 
On a mean of 12 years, the Winds blow about equally from all 
quarters ; from the N.W. the most frequently —from the South 
the least frequently. 
(The principal promontories, bays, rivers and heights of Lake 
Superior were pointed out on the map.) 
The scenery of Lake Superior is striking ; — its features are large 
and open (of which an example was shewn in a Sketch on the East 
Coast). The eye ranges over high lands and shoreless waters. 
The scanty and dwarfed woods of the north coast, the rocks, isles, 
and rivers full of cascades, have an impress of their own —not 
warm, soft, and umbrageous like thuse of Lake Erie; but rugged, 
bare and chill—arctic. The scene is oceanic, — the waves are 
large and high. Some of the plants, the Lathyrus Maritimus and 
the Polygonum Maritimum, for instance, on the beaches, and many 
of the insects disporting about, are those of the distant. Atlantic. 
In winter, Lake Superior might be called the ‘‘ Dead Sea ;” every 
living thing is gone, save the shivering inhabitants of some few 
white settlements. The Indian and the wild animals have retreated to 
the warm woods far away; and the sun looks down, from a 
bright blue sky, on the leaden waters, now narrowed by huge 
fields of ice —a small dark speck on an almost illimitable expanse 
of snow. 
On the south shore, there are in the extreme east, high terraces 
and treeless plains of blown sand for many miles inland and along 
shore, succeeded by the high sandstone precipices, called the Pictured 
Rocks, battered into fanciful shapes by the violence of the waves. 
Then comes a low rocky coast for 200 miles or more, backed by 
dense forests, often mountainous, as at the Huron, Bohemian, and 
Porcupine mountains. The scene is dark with the verdure of 
northern evergreens, and is here and there diversified with small 
clearings, and the smoke of distant mines ascending among the 
uplands. The bays are often deep—full of little iron-stained streams ; 
and the promontories stretch for miles into the lake. 
The Eastern and Northern shores are different— more naked, 
steeper, ever abounding in dome-shaped hills, or in ridges, rising 
by steps, scantily covered with trees either stunted or scorched with 
