Scientific Intelligence.— -Meteorology. 367 
tar in France, the winters, some centuries back, have been as cold 
as at present. He grounds his opinion upon the fact of the freez- 
ing of the rivers and seas at a great number of periods even of 
very remote date. The author then gives a table of the ex- 
treme temperatures observed at Paris, from which there results 
that, in the second half of the last century, the greatest cold ( — 
23.° 5 cent.) took place on the 25th January 1795, and the 
greatest heat (38.°4) on the 8th July 1793. He then gives the 
temperatures observed during the expeditions of Captains Parry 
and Franklin, and the dates of the natural congelation of mer- 
cury, together with tables of the maximum temperatures ob- 
served on land, the maximum temperatures of the atmosphere 
observed on the open sea at a distance from the continents, and 
of the maximum temperature of the sea at its surface. From 
these observations together, M. Arago draws the following con- 
clusions : !«$£, In no part of the earth on land> and in no season , 
will a thermometer raised from 2 to 3 metres above the ground, 
and protected from all reverberation, attain the 4>6ih centigrade 
degree ; Qdly, In the open sea? the temperature of the air, what- 
ever be the place and season, never attains the 31 st centigrade de- 
gree; Qdly, The greatest degree of cold which has ever been ob- 
served upon our globe, with a thermometer suspended in the 
air, is 50 centigrade degrees below zero ; Mhly , The tempera- 
ture of the water of the sea , in no latitude and in no season, 
rises above -f 30 centigrade degrees. "—Ann. de Phys. et de 
Chim. t. 27. 
3. On the influence of the earth upon Meteors ; by Professor 
Meinecke.—P rofessor Meinecke, in a memoir, read to the Na- 
tural History Society of Halle, endeavours to prove, in various 
ways, the existence of an inferior terrestrial atmosphere. He 
considers it as founded upon solid conclusions, that the atmos- 
phere, which may penetrate to the depth of twenty geographi- 
cal miles into the interior of the earth, is already compressed at 
a less depth, to such a degree, that, without being liquid, it forms 
a fluid equivalent to water. From this there results a mass of 
inferior terrestrial atmosphere, in comparison of which the up- 
per atmosphere appears very small, although equivalent, as is 
well known, to a column of water about 30 feet in height. It 
is to this mass of lower air, contained in the pores of minerals, in 
b b 2 
