1865.] Pengelly on the Causes of Britain s Greatness. 31 



the square increases. A small island, however, is incapable of a 

 large population, the nation inhabiting it can never be sufficiently 

 numerous to be very powerful. Now, Britain is large enough to sus- 

 tain a nation capable of commanding resjiect, yet small enough to 

 secure a larger relative coast-line than any other country in Europe. 



An island has also the great advantage of comparative equability of 

 climate. The sea is less liable than the land to fluctuations of tem- 

 perature ; on several accounts it is cooler than the latter in summer, 

 and warmer in the winter ; hence the breezes which blow from it 

 throughout the year are more equable than those coming from the 

 land. Now, excepting those of a very local character, no wind pass- 

 ing over an island of moderate dimensions can fail to be charged with 

 marine influences. Severe as a northerly or north-easterly wind may 

 sometimes be in a British spring, its severity would be unquestionably 

 greater, and we should be less able to bear it, but for the sea with 

 which our island is engirt. 



Again, our position is near the middle of one of the temperate zones. 

 Had it been within or very near the torrid zone on the one hand, or 

 the frigid on the other, any advantages connected with our situation 

 in other respects would have been greatly impaired. If one may so 

 speak, our energies would have evaporated in the first case, or frozen 

 in the second. " A hot climate," says the late Professor Waitz, " ren- 

 ders physical, and still more mental, labour difficult, induces man to 

 consider every kind of effort as a greater evil, and indolence a greater 

 enjoyment than is the case in temperate or cold regions."* The tem- 

 perature, however, in our latitudes is not only compatible with labour 

 throughout the year, but may be said to compel it ; exercise, another 

 name for work, being essential to the maintenance of health. 



Omitting the ellipticity of the earth's orbit and the phenomenon of 

 twilight, the year is everywhere equally divided between light and 

 darkness ; but though this law obtains throughout the world, its inci- 

 dence is variable and depends on the latitude of the place ; the greater 

 the latitude the greater the inequality of longest and shortest days, 

 but everywhere the excess of the first, over twelve hours, is always 

 balanced by the defect of the second. Now, taking Greenwich as 

 representing the British Islands, our longest day is about sixteen hours 

 and a half, and the shortest seven and a half, that is, from sunrise to 

 sunset ; hence when most curtailed the day falls but little below the 

 time in which an industrious man can expend his energies. A few 

 degrees farther North would bring much shorter winter days as well 

 as a severe climate, and a corresponding removal Southwards would 

 introduce a climate unsuited to an energetic race. 



The length of day and night, moreover, is of importance in other 

 respects. The acquisition of heat depends very largely on the former, 

 and the loss of it, through radiation, on the latter. In higher lati- 

 tudes less heat is received, and more lost, during the winter than with 

 us, and the reverse obtains in the summer ; the total effect being to 

 augment the difference between the summer and winter temperatures, 



* ' Anthropology,' p. 330. 



