The Canadian Horticulturist. 



THE WEST WIND. 



T is strange how many people have never got acquainted with West 

 wind. A friend, who keeps a domestic observatory, was showing me 

 his records — taken three times a day — and in the month just past there 

 were twenty days of West wind. And the whole year will show even a 

 larger proportion than that, and yet people will build houses on the 

 east side of a street in a village ; and wonder " Why they get so much 

 And have their stoves in the east end of a church, and find " so much 

 difficulty in getting the building warm at the farther end ! " 



Our ecclesiastically-superstitious forefathers were accustomed to think and 

 and say a great dea about '* Or entation." It seemed a great thing to 

 get the exact point of the sunrise on some particular day. As for instance, 

 if a church was to be built in honor of St, George, then a solemn vigil 

 must be kept all the night preceding the 23rd April : and as the sun rose on 

 that morning, the exact east or south-east point must be secured, so that the 

 "east end of the church shall face exactly so T'' And thus. they got the true,. 

 " Orientation " of that particular saint's church. 



Not for honoring mediaeval saints but for the very useful purpose of keep- 

 ing ourselves warm, we ought to give a good deal of attention, not to the orient- 

 ation, but the Occidentation of our dwellings and public buildings. Keeway- 

 tin, whom Longfellow describes in Hiawatha as the north-west wind, is a very 

 persistent fellow ; and we need not think, by naming an ever-shifting and some- 

 what visionary territory after him in the north-west, to get rid of his presence 

 here ! But in reality our ever-present friend is rather south-west than north-west. 

 From Prof. Maury, the best authority we have on marine and aerial currents, 

 and all that results from them, we come to the following deductions : 



The great bulk of the earth at the equator, as it swings easterly on its axis, 

 fails to carry the thin fluid of the air with it as fast as it moves itself ; and there 

 is the same contrary current we would feel if carried swiftly forward on a per- 

 fectly calm day. Hence, the trade, or easterly winds of the Tropics. These ex- 

 tend as far on each side of the equator as the vertical sun is found ; or 23^° 

 north and south latitude. As the heat is greatest in the centre of the heated 

 region — the equator — there is drawing toward the centre from both sides ; and the 

 east wind has a little north or south in it, as it blows respectively at the north or 

 south of the equator. As the great recoil or eddy of this ever-present eastern 

 tropical wind, the prevailing winds of the temperate zones are west — some- 

 what south-west. Every orchard in the country leans to the east ; every open 

 shed — if the farmer has any sense — has the west wind at its back. 



We used to be taught in school, (I wonder if it is in the geographies yet ?) 

 that the Gulf Stream made a mild climate for the British Islands. The fact is. 



