Climate of Europe and America. 277 
CLIMATE OF EUROPE AND AMERICA. 
Dr. Forry thus concludes a series of elaborate researches in 
elucidation of the distribution of heat over the globe. 
The fallacy of the opinion which ascribes the mild climate of 
Europe to the influence of agricultural improvements, becomes 
at once apparent when it is considered that the region of 
Oregon lying west of the Rocky mountains, which continues in a 
state of primitive nature, has a climate even milder than that of 
highly cultivated Europe in similar latitudes; and again, China, 
situated like the United States on the eastern coast of a continent, 
though subjected to cultivation for several thousand years, pos- 
sesses a climate as rigorous, and some assert even more so, than 
that of the United States proper, on similar parallels. 
It is thus sufficiently obvious, that the most diverse climatic 
phenomena on the same parallels find an explanation in the local 
influences of physical geography; and that contrary to the opin- 
ion of Lyell, even the apparent anomaly presented by the mild 
climate of Europe, and by the climatic rigor of Eastern North 
America, but confirms the harmony of these laws throughout the 
globe. But to explain this supposed exception to the general 
law, it has ever been found necessary, as appears by a recent 
treatise on comets, by M. Arago, to have recourse to the action of 
one of these bodies. 
" As soon as the Northern regions of America," says he, "were 
discovered, it was remarked by the navigators, that at the same 
latitude they were much colder than those of Europe. This fact, 
which could not be satisfactorily explained by the astronomic 
theory of climates, regarded the attention of many naturalists, and 
among others, of Halley. According to that celebrated philoso- 
pher, a comet had formerly struck the earth obliquely, and changed 
the position of its axis of rotation. In consequence of that event, 
the North Pole, which had originally been very near to Hudson's 
Bay, was changed to a more easterly position ; but the countries 
which it abandoned had been so long a time, and so deeply frozen, 
that evident vestiges still remain of its ancient polar rigor. A 
long series of years would be required for the solar action to im- 
part to the northern parts of the new continent the climate of their 
present geographical position." 
Fortunately our knowledge of meteorology is now sufficiently 
advanced to enable us to laugh at this crude explanation of a 
change in the position of the terrestial axis resulting from the 
concussion of a comet. — Am. Jour. Sci. and Arts. 
