"A point of much interest is the comparison of the actual temperature of the globe with that of the same regions in former ages. The evidence which justifies the conclusion that no change has occurred but from local or superficial causes, is worth studying, were it only for its variety and singularity. We might begin with Laplace's conclusion, that the mean heat can not be altered by 1° of Réaumur since the time of Hipparchus, inasmuch as the dimensions of the globe would be thereby changed in a small amount, its angular velocity be increased or diminished, and a sensible difference be made in the length of the day, which difference does not exist. We might then proceed to the argument urged by Biot and Champollion, from the identity of the time of inundation in the Nile, 5000 years ago, the periodical rains producing which depend upon and indicate the degree and distribution of heat over a vast equatorial region. Next we might turn to the method of Professor Schaw, in his work on the comparative temperature of ancient and modern times, founded on the northern and southern limits of production of different animals and plants in any given country, as they come recorded to us by ancient writers, compared with the observations of our own day. The result of general identity is obtained by this method also; and the same remark may be extended to the miscellaneous proofs derived from other passages in ancient writers, numerously collated, respecting the climate of particular regions and localities. There is no amount of diversity shown by this evidence which does not admit of explanation from local and accidental causes, many of them belonging to the agency of man himself, on the surface of the earth."--_Quarterly Review_, September, 1848. "Several planters attribute the failure of the cotton crop this year (1842) to the unusual size and number of the icebergs, which floated southward last spring from Hudson's and Baffin's Bays, and may have cooled the sea and checked the early growth of the cotton plant, so numerous and remote are the disturbing causes of meteorology! Forty degrees of latitude intervene between the region where the ice-floes are generated and that where the crops are raised, whose death-warrant they are supposed to have carried with them."--Lyell's _America_, vol. i., p. 174. No. XXV.