From the information I received, I have reason to believe that the rainy
season sets in usually about the first of July and continues very wet
till September or October, when there is usually a dry fine season of a
month or six weeks. I resided in the county of Cork, etc., from October
till March, and found the winter much more soft and mild than ever I
experienced one in England. I was also a whole summer there (1778), and
it is fair to mention that it was as fine a one as ever I knew in
England, though by no means so hot. I think hardly so wet as very many I
have known in England. The tops of the Galty mountains exhibited the
only snow we saw; and as to frosts, they were so slight and rare that I
believe myrtles, and yet tenderer plants, would have survived without any
covering. But when I say that the winter was not remarkable for being
wet, I do not mean that we had a dry atmosphere. The inches of rain
which fell in the winter I speak of would not mark the moisture of the
climate. As many inches will fall in a single tropical shower as in a
whole year in England. See Mitchel's "Present State of Great Britain and
North America." But if the clouds presently disperse, and a bright sun
shines, the air may soon be dry. The worst circumstance of the climate
of Ireland is the constant moisture without rain. Wet a piece of
leather, and lay it in a room where there is neither sun nor fire, and it
will not in summer even be dry in a month. I have known gentlemen in
Ireland deny their climate being moister than England, but if they have
eyes let them open them, and see the verdure that clothes their rocks,
and compare it with ours in England--where rocky soils are of a russet
brown however sweet the food for sheep. Does not their island lie more
exposed to the great Atlantic; and does not the west wind blow
three-fourths of a year? If there was another island yet more westward,
would not the climate of Ireland be improved? Such persons speak equally
against fact, reason, and philosophy. That the moisture of a climate
does not depend on the quantity of rain that falls, but on the powers of
aerial evaporation, Dr. Dobson has clearly proved. "Phil. Trans." vol.
lxvii., part i., p. 244.
Oppression.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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