240 Dr. Forry on the Climate of the United States, S^c. 



tilled, and even the steepest monnlains, cut into terraces, are 

 brought under cultivation. Now, as this country still presents a 

 climate as austere as that of Canada in the same latitudes, the 

 conclusion is irresistible, that in proportion as the leading physi- 

 cal characters of a region are immutable in their nature, does error 

 pervade the remark of Malte-Brun — "That vanquished nature 

 yields its empire to man, who thus creates a country for himself." 



A partial view of this question, indeed, not unfrequently leads 

 to the most unwarranted conclusions. Any changes in the climate 

 of the United States as yet perceived, are very far from justifying 

 the sanguine calculations indulged in, a few years ago, by a writer 

 whose observations upon many other points are very valuable. 



" But there will doubtless be," he says, "an amelioration in this 

 particular, when Canada and the United States shall become thick- 

 ly peopled and generally cultivated. In this latitude, then, like the 

 same parallels in Europe at present, snow and ice will become rare 

 phenomena, and the orange, the olive, and other vegetables of the 

 same class, now strangers to the soil, will become objects of the la- 

 bor and solicitude of the agriculturist.^^ 



The fallacy of the opinion which ascribes the mild climate of 

 Europe to the influence of agricultural improvement, becomes at 

 once apparent, when it is considered that the region of Oregon, ly- 

 ing west of the Rocky Mountains, which continues in a state of 

 primitive nature, has a climate even milder than that of highly 

 cultivated Europe in similar latitudes ; and again, China, situated 

 like the United States on the eastern coast of a continent, though 

 subjected to cultivation for several thousand years, possesses a cli- 

 mate as rigorous, and some assert even more so, than that of the 

 United States proper on similar parallels. 



It is thus sufficiently obvious that the most diverse climatic 

 phenomena on the same parallels find an explanation in the local 

 influences of physical geography ; and that, contrary to the opin- 

 ion of Lyell, even the apparent anomaly presented by the mild 

 climate of Europe, and by the climatic rigor of eastern North 

 America, but confirms the harmony of these laws throughout the 

 globe. But to explain this supposed exception to the general law, 

 it has even been found necessary, as appears by a recent treatise 

 on comets by M. Arago, to have recourse to the action of one of 

 these bodies. 



" As soon as the northern regions of America," he says, " were 

 discovered, it was remarked by the navigators that, at the same 



