CLIMATE. 289 



August, - - +16-06 deg. Cent. 



September, - +10 '72 ,, 



October, - - +5 '60 ,, 

 November, 0'14 ,, 



December, 3 '88 



' This relatively mild climate Finland owes to the seas 

 which surround it ; as these are never frozen throughout 

 their whole extent the winds traversing them during 

 autumn and winter come upon the country with a tepid 

 heat, and as a matter of fact it is only by the higher 

 temperature of winter that Finland differs from places 

 situated more to the east under the same parallel. While 

 the isothermal lines are almost the same for Finland as for 

 the Governments of Archangel and Olonetz, the isochime- 

 nal lines, on the contrary, descend directly towards the 

 south, so that Uleaborg has in winter the same mean tem- 

 perature as Saratoff, and Helsingfors and Abo the same as 

 Astrachan. We do not mean to intimate that the winters 

 of Finland are not severe. A temperature of 30 centi- 

 grade is at Helsingfors indeed a rare thing, but it 

 is not an extraordinary thing ; and at Tornea it happens, 

 if not every year, at least many times in every decade, 

 that mercury freezes in the thermometer. 



' There is a considerable difference between the climate 

 of the coast and that of the interior. The coast, influenced 

 immediately by the waters of the sea, which, heated in 

 summer, lose slowly their high temperature, but which, 

 once frozen, regain it slowly, and cool down warmer winds 

 coming from the west and the south ; in consequence of 

 this the change is much less sudden on the coasts than it 

 is in the interior. At Helsingfors, for example, vegetation 

 is much more tardy than at Tavastehus, which is more to 

 the north ; but, on the other hand, the trees there retain 

 their foliage much longer, and the sea is there free of ice 

 many weeks after the lakes around Tavastehus are frozen. 



' The proximity of the sea occasions also in Finland a 

 considerable rainfall. Observations made at Helsingfors 

 give an average of 160 days of rain per annum, and the 



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