Difference of Climate. 87 



' It is considered that a well-cultivated mulberry tree should 

 yield, in each season, about thirty pounds of good leaves. It 

 is not uncommon in the south of" France to see large trees 

 which will furnish five times this quantity. 



' It is said that no insect except the silk worm will feed on 

 the mulberry leaf. PuUein tried the speckled hair caterpillar, 

 which feeds on the nettle, as well as several other kinds of 

 insects, but they all rejected the mulberry leaf for their food. 

 Once, indeed, he discovered upon a mulberry tree a green 

 worm, about an inch long and as thick as an oat straw. He 

 confined it in a box, and fed his prisoner with mulberry leaves. 

 Pullein believes that it was not a native of the tree, but found 

 itself there accidentally when it was taken. During the con- 

 tinued observation of three years. Miss Rhodes never once 

 found an insect upon the leaves used by her. Other fruit 

 trees and vegetables in the same garden were sometimes 

 covered by myriads of insects, while the mulberry tree, sur- 

 rounded by these ravagers, remained sacred from their depre- 

 dations. Not even the aphides invade this tree, exclusively 

 devoted to the use of the silk worm.' 



DIFFERENCE OF CLIMATE. 



A NOTICE to emigrants, by the society for forming a settle- 

 ment in the Oregon Country, on the Columbia river, reminds 

 us of some interesting facts connected with climate, which 

 are, we imagine, new to most of our readers. One grand pe- 

 culiarity, not yet explained satisfactorily, is the superior mild- 

 ness of the climate of the western coast of a continent or 

 island, over the eastern, or opposite coast, in the same latitude 

 and elevation. 



Thus, for example, while all is sterility and desolation on 

 the eastern coast of North America, even as low as the 55th 

 degree of north latitude, and ice and snow maintain a per- 

 petual existence at the 60th parallel, we find on the coast of 

 Norway, or western coast of Europe, ten degrees higher, that 

 all is life, animation and beauty. 



The difference of climate between the western coast of North 

 America and the eastern coast of Asia is still more surprising, 

 when we reflect that the parts of the two continents to be 

 compared are only separated from each other by a strait, rather 

 more than forty miles in width. Kotzebue, in his voyage of 

 discovery, undertaken in 1815, informs us that the crossing of a 

 short extent of water, from America to Asia, was like passing 



