134 Facts in Meteorology. 



Rocky mountains, or from high latitudes on a course parallel to 

 those mountains, this region becomes subject to all the rigors of a 

 Siberian winter. 



The climate of China bears a close resemblance to that of the 

 United States, and the continental and oceanic positions of the two 

 countries are equally analogous. Both countries are subject to the 

 extremes of heat and cold above most others in the same latitudes. 



The character of the polar current, and the great quantities of ice 

 which it brings to the north-east coast of America, is supposed to in- 

 fluence the climate of that coast, particularly in the spring months. 

 At Newfoundland, which is in the latitude of Paris, late in the month^ 

 of June, 1831, the bays and harbors were full of ice. 



Of Deserts. 



The atmosphere is capable of absorbing moisture in proportion to 

 its temperature, and a current of air passing from a colder to a warmer 

 region has therefore a constantly increasing capacity for moisture. 

 This peculiarity necessarily pertains to one portion of each of the 

 great natural circuits of wind, or atmospheric current, in both hemis- 

 pheres. The necessary consequence is a great scarcity of rain in 

 the regions falling under this portion of the current, and hence those 

 arid deserts which occupy so large a portion of the otherwise most 

 fruitful latitudes. 



On examining the map of the world, it may be seen that this scar- 

 city of rain prevails chiefly, in countries lying upon the eastern borders 

 of the great oceans, and of their atmospheric circuits, and between 

 the 18th and 32d parallels of latitude. On the western borders of 

 the Atlantic, in both the Americas, where the aerial current is passing 

 from the lower to higher latitudes, there are abundant supplies of rain. 

 The same is true also of China and the eastern coast of Africa, and 

 also of the western shores of the Pacific generally, except as the ef- 

 fect is modified by the misplaced counter current of the Monsoons. 

 But not so on the eastern shores of these oceans, where the atmos- 

 phere which forms the extra-tropical winds, falling in again towards 

 the equator, presents a constant demand for additional moisture, and 

 parches and desolates extensive regions of country. 



In the atmospheric basin of the North Atlantic, we have the most 

 striking exhibition of this effect in the great African desert of Saha- 

 ra. Continuing our survey on the same parallels, we have also the 

 great deserts of Lybia, Egypt, and Arabia, subject, for the greater part, 



