GLIM ATE, &C. 



degrees. In his cellar it stood at 21 degrees,* and 

 .under his armpit at 29 degrees. Dr. Ramsey, who 

 made a series of observations at Charleston, saw 

 it rhc to 28 1-2 degrees only once in five yea.rs ; 

 but Charleston, built at the mouth of a little river 

 agitated by the tide, enjoys the sea-breezes, and has 

 so much the reputation of a cool place, compared 

 •with the rest of the country, that all the planters, 

 in easy circumstances, repair thither in Summer, 

 leaving only the negroes on their estates. f 



From these facts, we haye, for the southern states, 

 a scale of variation of 32 or 34 degrees ; and, no 

 doubt, the reader has observed, that this scale is in 

 a decreasing ratio from north to south. It was 66 

 degrees at Hudson's bay, 51 degrees in Massachu- 

 setts, 48 degrees in Pennsylvania, is reduced to 35 

 or 36 degrees in Carolina, and, if we were to pro- 

 ceed farther towards the tropics, we should find, in 

 many places, only 18 or 20 degrees, of annual varia- 

 tion. At Martinico, for instance, Porto Rico, and 

 others of the windward islands, the thermometer^ 

 owing to the prevailing breezes, does not rise higher 

 than 28 or fall lower than 10 degrees above 0. 

 On the chain of mountains in the provhice of Carac- 

 cas, in the latitude of 10 degrees north, at an eleva- 

 tion of more than a mile and a half above the level of 

 the oce^i% the quicksilver fluctuates between 10 and 



• See the American Museum, vol. v. p. 151. 



* Heat and cold are relative terms. Charlestown is certainly cool* 

 er than the country, but the chiet inducement for the planter to Jeay^t 

 hh farm is to avoid the exhalation from the rice swamps. 



