ABOUT THE WEATHER. 125 



bound in snow and ice almost throughout the whole 

 summer. While Wheat yet grows at Drontheim, at 

 Hudson's Bay, in the same latitude, no human settlements 

 are possible ; and in Siberia, under the same parallel, the 

 soil is scarcely thawed two feet deep in the height of 

 summer. Drontheim has pretty nearly the temperature of 

 Canada, which lies further south than Paris. In New 

 York, which is in the same latitude with Naples, the trees 

 begin to blossom at the same time as in Upsala. Spitz- 

 bergen has a kind of short summer, while, on a warm 

 summer's day in Melville's Island, three degrees more south, 

 the thermometer is at zero of Fahrenheit. 



The circumstance in question, however, is not the only 

 one which Europe has to thank for this pre-eminence. 

 There is yet another force, which takes, and by no means 

 an inconsiderable, part in the distribution of heat, and there- 

 fore of the weather, on the globe. I allude to the currents 

 of water in the great Oceans. The elevation of the 

 temperature by the equatorial sun, produces exactly 

 similar phenomena here to those in the aerial ocean ; 

 here two Polar currents are caused, which carry the 

 cold water to the line, and returning Equatorial currents, 

 which bring back the warmer water to the poles. 

 These currents, enclosed in beds of firm land, hindered or 

 assisted in their course by submarine mountain- chains, are 

 naturally much more diverted from the regularity which 

 they should follow from the producing principle, than the 

 unfettered air-currents, which often rush over the summits 

 of the highest mountains. One of these returning Equa- 

 torial currents, the water of which is, as it were, heated in 

 a kettle in the Gulf of Mexico, flows in a north-easterly 

 direction straight to the west coast of Europe, and brings 

 hither the warmth which it has acquired on the coast of 



