234 Dr Forry on the Climate of the United States. 



tifying the sanguine calculations indulged in, a few years ago, 

 by a writer, whose observations upon many other points are 

 very valuable. " But there will, doubtless, be," he says, " an 

 amelioration in this particular, when Canada and the United 

 States shall become thickly peopled, and generally cultivated. 

 In this latitude, then, like the same parallels in Europe at 

 present, snow and ice will become rare phenomena, and the 

 orange, the olive, and other vegetables of the same class, now 

 strangers to the soil, will become objects of the labour and solici- 

 tude of the agriculturist." 



The fallacy of the opinion which ascribes the mild climate 

 of Europe to the influence of agricultural improvement, be- 

 comes at once apparent, when it is considered, that the region 

 of Oregon lying west of the Rocky Mountains, which con- 

 tinues in a state of primitive nature, has a climate even 

 milder than that of highly cultivated Europe in similar lati- 

 tudes ; and, again, China, situated like the United States on 

 the eastern coast of a continent, though subjected to cultiva- 

 tion for several thousand years, possesses a climate as rigor- 

 ous, and some assert even more so, than that of the United 

 States proper, on similar parallels. 



It is thus sufficiently obvious, that the most diverse 

 climatic phenomena on the same parallels find an explanation 

 in the local influences of physical geography ; and that, con- 

 trary to the opinion of Lyell, even the apparent anomaly pre- 

 sented by the mild climate of Europe, and by the climatic 

 rigour of eastern North America, but confirms the harmony 

 of these laws throughout the globe. But to explain this sup- 

 posed exception to the general law, it has even been found 

 necessary, as appears by a recent treatise on Comets by M. 

 Arago, to have recourse to the action of one of these bodies. 

 " As soon as the northern regions of America," he says, 

 "were discovered, it was remarked by the navigators, that at 

 the same latitude they were much colder than those of 

 Europe. This fact, which could not be satisfactorily explained 

 by the astronomic theory of climates, engaged the attention 

 of many naturalists, and among others, of Halley. Accoi'd- 

 ing to that celebrated philosopher, a comet had formerly 

 struck the earth obliquely, and changed the position of its 



