the real and apparent verges towards the highest point, until they all terminated at the ninetieth degree of latitude; this being the direction a person would travel in order to have his back to the sun always at 12 o'clock, the time of his greatest altitude. Although the particular location of the places where the verges of the polar openings are believed to exist, may not have been ascertained with absolute certainty, yet they are believed to be nearly correct; their localities having been ascertained from appearances that exist in those regions; such as a belt or zone surrounding the globe where trees and other vegetation (except moss) do not grow; the tides of the ocean flowing in different directions, and appearing to meet; the existence of volcanoes; the "_ground swells_" in the sea being more frequent; the Aurora Borealis appearing to the southward; and various other phenomena existing in and about the same regions, mark the relative position of the real verges. The heat and cold of the different climates are governed by their distance from the verge of the polar opening, and do not depend on their nearness to or remoteness from the equator. The natural climates are parallel to the planes of the polar openings, and cut the parallels of latitude at an angle of twelve degrees. When the sun is on the tropic of Capricorn, the circle of greatest cold would be about twenty-three and a half degrees south of the apparent verge, and when the sun is on the tropic of Cancer this circle would probably be just under the umbrage of the real verge: hence it follows, if this doctrine be correct, that the climate of forty degrees north latitude on the plains of Missouri, in the western part of the continent of America, will be as cold in winter, as the latitude of fifty or fifty-two degrees in Europe; and observation has fully confirmed such to be the fact.