OF PERIODIC PHENOMENA. 349 



co-operate upon some common plan. Hence the 

 application of this subject to climatological purposes 

 has been scarcely practicable.* The case, how- 

 ever, is much altered now, from the circumstance 

 of a number of scientific persons having agreed 

 to undertake a regular system of observations in 

 Meteorology and Natural History, with an espe- 

 cial view to those important questions connected 

 with climate, and animal and vegetable phy- 

 siology, before spoken of (5). In the paragraph 

 just referred to, we have already alluded to this 

 scheme of systematic observing, which originated, 



* We would not have it inferred by this, that some valuable 

 attempts have not been occasionally made to combine the obser- 

 vations (upon the periods of vegetation principally) collected by 

 different observers in different places, so as to shew their con- 

 nexion with, and to illustrate, the laws of climate. All we mean is, 

 that such attempts could hardly be productive of results equal to 

 what may be expected from carrying out the plan to which refer- 

 ence is about to be made, and which we believe is quite new as 

 regards European observers, though we are not sure whether a 

 similar one has not for some years back been acted upon in the 

 United States. 



As a specimen of what has been effected hitherto in this way 

 in modern times, we may allude to an instructive paper by Mr. 

 Hogg, "On the Influence of the climate of Naples upon the 

 periods of Vegetation, as compared with that of some other 

 places in Europe." (Phil. Mag. and Journ. of Sci. 1834, vol. iv. 

 p. 274, and vol. v. pp. 46 and 102.) The greater part of this paper, 

 the author tells us, is translated from an " Essay on the Physical 

 and Botanical Geography of the Kingdom of Naples," by Signer 

 Tenore : the remainder consists of some comparative remarks on 

 the vegetation of England, principally compiled from White's 

 Naturalist's Calendar, with observations of his own. 



