7 
84 Meteorological Observations in Western Asia. 
fitted up in their cellars, where they retreat to spend the middle 
of the day. The nights are uniformly spent on the flat roofs, 
dew and rain being wholly unknown during the summer season. 
One peculiarity growing out of this extreme heat of the climate, 
was often the subject of our remarks. Contact with every thing 
dry communicated the sensation of heat, our beds seemed. to have 
been just scorched with a warming-pan, and stone floors appeared 
as if endowed with the power of generating caloric. Instead of 
being refreshed by the cooling sensation which a change of 
clothes ordinarily gives in the summer, the linen taken out of our 
coolest wardrobes seemed always, on putting it on, to have come — 
roasting hot from the mouth of some glowing furnace. 
‘Respecting Jerusalem and Oormia, not having visited hove 
places, we are unable to give, according to the plan pursued with 
regard. to the other points from which we have records, any pro- 
minent meteorological peculiarities which might not be inferred 
from the above tables. A great tendency to intermittent fever is 
known to exist on the plains of Oormia, and may be mentioned 
as one peculiarity of the climate of that place as a mission station. 
The cause of this is no doubt to be found, either in the miasmata » 
of the city or the exhalations from the ins pati which bounds 
those plains on the east. — 
- From observations made: for ninel years by is 0 missionaries 
resident in Beirat, Trebizond and Oormia, it has been found that 
by leaving those cities for the mountains near at hand, during the — 
summer months, they obtain a healthier and far more pleasant 
place of residence. This has led to a careful comparison be- 
tween the temperature of the plain and the places of resort on — 
the mountains, and in neither of these cases does the average-va- 
riation exceed 7° or 8° Fahrenheit. Still, the variation in one’s 
feelings is very manifest, even in ascending four or five hundred — 
While, on the plain the parched and sultry air of a sum- 
mer’s day seems almost insupportable, the breeze of the upper 
Strata of air seems to refresh and revive the spirits, and to-infuse 
new life into the whole system. “What is the cause of. this 
effect on the physical frame ?’”’ is yet a question open for investi- 
gation. Would the residents at Oormia be refreshed by a sudden 
removal to the sides of Mt. Lebanon, or to the hills back of Tre- 
bizond? Ifso, as such a removal would bring them two or three 
- eff 
‘oct iS 
