76 TWENTIETH ANNUAL REPORT ON THE STATE CABINET. 



produce a manifest difference in temperature at particular seasons 

 and on the coldest days, it is not likely that it will exert any very 

 great influence on the general average of temperature for the 

 year ; but it will accomplish two important practical results : 

 (1) It will retard the spring so as to prevent the more delicate 

 fruits from putting forth so soon as to be in the way of the later 

 frosts ; and (2) it will put off the frosts in the autumn, so as to 

 allow grapes and other fruits that need a long season, to ripen 

 better than they otherwise would. 



If, now, inland towns like all those in the western and north- 

 western part of our State, and those in States farther west and in 

 Canada even, are situated not on a lake merely, but in the neigh- 

 borhood of a chain or system of them, we shall have these inland 

 bodies of fresh water exerting an influence upon them all, and 

 extending over a large tract similar to what I have described, and 

 similar, likewise, to some extent, to that which I have ascribed to 

 the greater bodies of salt water, in speaking of inland distance. 

 There can be no doubt, I think, that we are indebted to this influ- 

 ence, largely, for the climate which renders our inland towns and 

 counties in central New-York so productive. Like the Atlantic 

 ocean on the east of us, which, as already said, is exposed to more 

 than its normal share of the polar current by the position and 

 course of the great mountain ranges of the old continent, so our 

 land is exposed to, and receives far more than its due share of 

 the same cold winds by reason of the situation of the Eocky moun- 

 tains. The polar current that should pass over where they stand, 

 is turned out of its course by them, and deflected across the conti- 

 nent towards the Atlantic ocean ; so that our polar currents, which 

 should come from a northeasterly direction, come from the north- 

 west, and are sometimes deflected so far that they come to us 

 from a point of the compass that is some degrees to the south of 

 west. Hence it is, as I think, that the isothermal line of 50 deg. 

 for the year, which should pass some ten degrees northward of 

 us — latitude 43 — passes across the continent from the moment it 

 reaches the plains east of the Eocky mountains in the northern 

 part of Colorado, along in a direction somewhat south of easterly 

 until it reaches and passes by the longitude of the great lakes, 

 and then turns to a direction north of east until it reaches its 

 normal parallel of latitude, 50 deg., about the middle of the At- 

 lantic ocean, and after it has crossed and been warmed by the 

 Gulf stream. 



