CLIMATOLOGY. 333 



tion with respect to Africa, whose wide extent of tropical land 

 is favourable to the ascending current, while the equatorial 

 region to the south of Asia is almost wholly oceanic; and 

 next to its deeply-articulated configuration, to the vicinity of 

 the ocean on its western shores ; and lastly, to the existence 

 of an open sea, which bounds its northern confines. Europe 

 would, therefore, become colder * if Africa were to be over- 

 flowed by the ocean ; or if the mythical Atlantis were to arise 

 and connect Europe with North America; or if the gulf 

 stream were no longer to diffuse the warming influence of its 

 waters into the North Sea; or if, finally, another mass of 

 solid land should be upheaved by volcanic action, and inter- 

 posed between the Scandinavian peninsula and Spitzbergen. 

 If we observe that in Europe the mean annual temperature 

 falls, as we proceed, from west to east, under the same paral- 

 lel of latitude, from the Atlantic shores of France through 

 Germany, Poland, and Russia, towards the Uralian mountains, 

 the main cause of this phenomenon of increasing cold must be 

 sought in the form of the continent, (which becomes less 

 indented, and wider, and more compact as we advance,) in the 

 increasing distance from seas, and in the diminished influence 

 of westerly winds. Beyond the Uralian mountains these 

 winds are converted into cool land-winds, blowing over 

 extended tracts covered with ice and snow. The cold of 

 western Siberia is to be ascribed to these relations of con- 

 figuration and atmospheric currents, and not as Hippocrates 

 and Trogus Pompeius, and even celebrated travellers of the 

 eighteenth century conjectured to the great elevation of the 

 soil above the level of the sea.f 



If we pass from the differences of temperature manifested 

 in the plains to the inequalities of the polyhedric form of the sur- 

 face of our planet, we shall have to consider mountains either 

 in relation to their influence on the climate of neighbouring 



* See my memoir, Ueber die Haupt- Ursacken der Temperalurver- 

 scliiedenheit auf der Erdolerfiache, in the Abhandl. der Akad. der 

 Wissensch. zu Berlin von dem Jakre 1827, s. 311. 



f The general level of Siberia, from Tobolsk, Tomsk, and Barnaul, 

 from the Altai mountains to the Polar Sea, is not so high as that of 

 Manheim and Dresden ; indeed Irkutsk, far to the east of the Jenisei, is 

 only 1330 feet above the level of the sea, or about one-third lower 

 thfl^i Munich. 



