94 REPORT ON THE STATE CABINET. 



winds which blow from the southwest to the northeast in our summer, 

 when South Africa is cold and Southern Asia is hot ; and on the other 

 hand, they blow from the northeast to the southwest in our winter, when 

 Southern Asia, being in the northern hemisphere, is cold, and South 

 Africa, being on the other side of the equator, is hot. But across the 

 Atlantic, where there is the same conformation and distribution of lands 

 as between the north of Africa and the south of South America, there are 

 not only no monsoons, but the trade winds are most marked of any place 

 on the surface of the globe ; and these trade winds, of course, are but the 

 polar current become the surface current within the tropics. 



3. In the third place, the extremes of heat in summer and of cold in 

 winter are not so great as indicated by the line of real temperature as the 

 computation would lead us to expect. This remark applies, of course, 

 not to individual and peculiar days, but rather to general average for the 

 hottest and the coldest days. The hottest day by the general average is 

 August 1st, 73°.29, and the hottest week is that ending August 5th, 

 71°.82; whereas, computation gives for that week 75°.28, a difference of 

 3°.46; and if in my computation I had corrected for "absorption" or 

 reflection from the atmosphere, the difference would have been several 

 degrees more. 



So in winter. The coldest day in the general average by observation 

 is February 3d, 19°.09 ; but the week in which it occurs, the coldest 

 week in the year, averages only 23°.19 ; whereas, by computation, it is 

 19^.08, and if corrected for " absorption," would have been several degrees 

 colder; but without the correction, the difierence is 4°. 11, which, added 

 to the summer difference, makes 7°.57. 



This difference I attribute partly to general influences and partly to 

 local influences that are local and special. Besides all the causes that I 

 have spoken of as influencing climate, there is one more, the effects of 

 which are not to be overlooked altogether. During the summer a large 

 part of the sun's heat is absorbed by the vegetable growth that is going 

 on. In this essay, thus far, I have taken no notice of the theories of heat, 

 l3ut have used terms derived from the old theory of an imponderable, 

 transmissible, measui'able substance. I think, however, that that theory 

 has been effectually dispersed, and that it has been shown that the word 

 heat is an abstract term, denoting only the condition or property of bodies. 

 But whatever be the theory we adopt, the result is the same as if heat 

 were a substance, which, in the process of vegetable growth, is converted 

 into vital or vegetable force, and thus ceases to appear or to affect any- 



