'278 REMARKS AND OPINIONS. 



hollowed out by ii deep iniet penetrating towards 

 the pole, we are of opinion that these anomalies 

 must be attributed to local circumstances, which 

 cause the temperature, and, probably, to those 

 that produce the much warmer climate, which 

 that part of the world that we inhabit is knowai to 

 enjoy, beyond all other countries of the northern 

 hemisphere, under the same degree of latitude, 

 which give woods and corn to Lapland, as far as 

 to the seventieth degree, and support vegetation 

 in Spitzbergen, even to the eightieth degree, and 

 make that country able to maintain numerous 

 herds of rein-deer, which the desert and naked 

 Nova Zembla is unable to support. 



At a time when men, like Humboldt, Buch, 

 Wallenberg, &c. are labouring to increase the 

 mass of experience, and a Humboldt attempts to 

 look over, to investigate, and to bring under one 

 law, the fragments of local meteorological observa- 

 tions which w^e now possess, as scanty contributions 

 to physical geography ; to draw isothermal lines 

 over the globe ; let us be permitted to submit to 

 the examination of natural philosophers, an hypo- 

 thesis for the explanation of the phenomenon. 



We ask whether the theory which explains the 

 sea and land breezes on the coasts, alternating by 

 day and night, the local summer and winter mon- 

 soons, and, lastly, the general trade-winds, might 

 not suffice in most cases, to explain the local dif- 

 ferences of climate under the same latitude i' 



