connection with the Climate of Berlin, 227 



is spent in melting away the winter's ice and snow. The warm air 

 must, however, before long successfully oppose the pressure of the 

 cold air, the return of which will only be the more sudden, the more 

 suddenly the warmth has increased. In such cases as these the 

 spring is unpleasantly distinguished by frequent transitions from 

 warm to very severe weather. It is on this circumstance the proverb 

 is founded which foretells a white Easter from a green Christmas. 

 Hence, too, the English couplet — 



" If the grass grow in Janevier, 

 It grows the worse for all the year." 



And the still more decided one — 



" If Janevier calends be summerly gay, 

 'Twill be winterly weather till th' calends of May." 



In Italy, too, they say — 



" Quando Gennajo mette erba, 

 Si tu hai grano, e tu lo serba." 



The warmth in the south of Germany 1839, and afterwards in 

 Northern Germany in December, was so great, that people wrote from 

 Munich that they had never till then expected to see the description 

 of an old chronicle realised, that young maidens had come to Church 

 on Christmas eve with roses in their hair. But how soon was this 

 dream dissipated. The icy wind, beneath whose deadly breath those 

 early flowers bloomed, blew from the Salz-steppes, between the Cas- 

 pian and Oral Seas, from the country which the Kirgisites call the 

 Valley of Death, and from the coast, of Emba, where the Russian 

 expedition to China came to a halt in a cold of 40° F. below zero. 

 The cold then experienced was more severely felt on account of its 

 having been preceded by an unusual degree of warmth. In any other 

 year the result of the expedition might have been very different. It 

 is a remarkable thing, that the same power of nature which had ob- 

 structed the designs of Russia stopped Napoleon's proud career. And 

 it is still the same Gorgon shield which prevents the West from press- 

 ing forward into the immoveable East. The cold current does not, 

 however, always lie towards the East. The winter of 1834-35 gives 

 a striking example of this. 



The greatest observed cold at Berlin in January, February, and 

 March, was 18 0, 5 Fahr. ; the medium temperature of these three 

 months was however 30°-875, 27°'5, and 22°-25 Fahr. ; and what is 

 still more striking, not ten days followed each other consecutively dur- 

 ing this period, the mean temperature of which fell below the freezing 

 point. That this phenomenon was occasioned by a southern current 

 is therefore clear, the most significant wind of the north current, the 

 NE., not having been once observed from the 1st of January to the 

 18th of March. During this time such a fearful degree of cold pre- 

 vailed in America, that at the beginning of January the harbours of 



