TEMPERATURE OF CANTON. 25 



country in some districts of the province is subject 

 to nitrous impregnations, and is as white as if a 

 slight fall of snow covered the ground. The earth 

 is frozen for three or four feet deep; and, once 

 frozen, it does not thaw again till the end of March. 

 This is sufficient," he observes, " to explain why the 

 frost kills, in the vicinity of Peking, plants which 

 Linnaeus has raised in Sweden, which is nearly 20 

 degrees north of the Chinese capital." (Memoires 

 concernant les Chinois, tome vi. p. 339.) 



At Canton, which borders on the tropics, N. lat. 

 23° 8', and which is the most southern metropo- 

 litan city of the empire, as Peking is the capital 

 and most northern one, the average degree of the 

 thermometer is 53° in the morning; during the 

 winter, and 82° at noon during the summer.* The 

 mean annual temperature may be stated at 71°, 

 the mean range from 57° to 84°, and the extreme 

 range from 29° to 94°. f The mean of four journals 

 kept at Canton and Macao by Messrs. Bletterman, 

 Beale, and Kerr (a respectable and intelligent gar- 

 dener, sent out by Sir Joseph Banks), for a series 

 of years, and Mr. Colledge's Journal for one year, 

 given in the Canton Register for 1838, furnish a 

 mean temperature for the four seasons as fol- 

 lows : — 



"Winter, 58; Spring, 71; Summer, 83; Autumn, 75; 



Annual mean, 71 T 7 jJ . 



* Sir George Staunton's manuscript Journal. 



f Kerr's Journal, and Davis's "Chinese," second edition, p. 339. 



