314 PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



and the love of liberty,) spread over the whole extent from 

 North Carolina and Virginia to the banks of the St. Law- 

 rence, they were astonished at the degree of winter cold which 

 they had to endure, when compared with the climates of Italy, 

 France, and the British Islands, in corresponding parallels of 

 latitude. But, however well fitted to awaken attention, the 

 comparison bore no fruit until it could be based on nu- 

 merical results of mean annual temperature. If between 

 58 and 30 of north latitude, we compare Nain on the 

 coast of Labrador with Gottenburg, Halifax with Bor- 

 deaux, New York with Naples, and St. Augustin in Florida 

 with Cairo, we find the differences of mean annual tempera- 

 ture under equal latitudes, in Eastern America and Western 

 Europe, commencing with the northernmost pair of stations, 

 and proceeding southwards, successively 11.5, 7.7, 3.8, 

 and almost Cent. (20.7, 13.8, 6.8, and almost 0Fah.) 

 The gradual diminution of the differences in this series, 

 which extends over twenty-eight degrees of latitude, is 

 striking. Farther to the south, under the tropics, the iso- 

 thermal lines in both parts of the world are every where 

 parallel to the equator. "We see from the above examples, 

 that the questions often asked in society, how many degrees 

 America (without distinction of its eastern or western coast), 

 is colder than Europe? or how much the mean annual 

 temperature of Canada and the United States is lower than 

 that of the corresponding latitudes in Europe ? have, when 

 thus generally expressed, no definite meaning. The differ- 

 ence is not the same under different parallels ; and unless we 

 compare separately the winter and the summer temperatures 

 of the opposite coasts, we shall not be able to form any clear 



