308 West and North-west Winds of New-England 
might be suppressed, provided ‘ others had made a similar 
explanation,” which the writer remarks he had “ not hap- 
pened to observe.’? We presume, therefore, that he and 
probably others will consider it proper to preserve, in this 
place, the following more extended observations of Dr. 
Dwight, who was a careful observer of natural phenomena, 
and particularly attentive to meteorology. . 
President Dwight remarks in the first place that the 
extremes of our temperature and particularly of cold, are 
much greater than in the corresponding latitudes of Eu- 
rope ; that the changes are more sudden and considerable, 
that a change of thirty degrees in twenty-four hours some- 
times occurs, and that in one instance he had known it to _ 
amount to forty-eight degrees. He then proceeds to 
discuss the various theories which have been proposed to 
account for these and other similar facts, and after stating 
his reasons for considering them ail as imperfect or erro- 
neous, he gives his own views as foliows : 
‘The winds, which generate the peculiar cold of this 
country, are, in my own opinion, derived, principally, from 
a source, very different from all those, which have been 
specified ; and descend, in most cases, from the superior 
regions of the atmosphere. My reasons for this opinion | 
will now proceed to state. 
It is well known to men of information, that in the lat- 
itudes above 30°, the prevailing winds are those from the 
West. This is undoubtedly a part of those extensive 
atmospherical revolutions, which | have mentioned. The 
winds in, and near the torrid zone, blow generally from the 
East. By this phraseology ] intend the points Westward, 
and Eastward, of the meridian. ‘The atmosphere may be 
considered as preserving by these two great motions its 
own equilibrium. This general tendency of the winds to 
blow from the West is, in the American Atlantic States, 
not a little increased by their local circumstances. The 
ocean in the winter, is, for obvious reasons, warmer than 
the land ; and therefore occasions a continual pressure of 
the land atmosphere towards it. At a moderate distance 
from the coast, the Gulf stream, an immense current of 
water, so warm as during the winter to send upa vast and 
very copious evaporation, both visible and invisible, and 
to occasion continual and very important changes of weath- 
