CLIMATE. 125 



asperity of winter and the heat of summer : hence arises a 

 second important contrast, that between insular or littoral 

 climates (enjoyed also in some degree by continents whose 

 outline is broken by peninsulas and bays), and the climate of 

 the interior of great masses of solid land. Leopold von Buch 

 was the first writer who entered fully into the subject of this 

 remarkable contrast, and the varied phenomena resulting from 

 it ; its influence on agriculture and vegetation, on the transpar- 

 ency of the atmosphere and the serenity of the sky, on the 

 radiation from the surface, and on the height and limit of per- 

 petual snow. In the interior of the Asiatic continent, Tobolsk, 

 Barnaul on the Obi, and Irkutsk have summers which, in 

 mean temperature, resemble those of Berlin and Munster, and 

 that of Cherbourg in Normandy, and during this season the 

 thermometer sometimes remains for weeks together at 30 and 

 31 C. (86 or 87.8 F.) ; but these summers are followed by 

 winters in which the coldest month has the severe mean tem- 

 perature of 18 to 20 C. (4 to +4 F.)." 



Flammarion, in his work entitled " The Atmos- 

 phere," * referring to the contrasts between con- 

 tinental and oceanic climates, says, on page 250 : 



" The climate of Ireland, Jersey and Guernsey, of the Pen- 

 insula of Brittany, of the coasts of Normandy, and the South 

 of England, countries in which the winters are mild and the 



* Eeprinted, by permission, from " The Atmosphere," by 

 Camille Flammarion. New York : Harper & Brothers, Frank- 

 lin Square, 1873. Pp. 454. 



11* 



