This contrast between the counter-trade and the adjacent atmosphere, in winter, in latitudes as low as that of the Brocken, is probably heightened by the increased warmth of the former, at that season. The S. E. trades then form under a vertical sun, and the difference of temperature can not be less than from 6 deg. to 8 deg.. Not unfrequently in winter and spring the rain will fall with a temperature of 50 deg. to 55 deg., when the atmosphere near the earth is 10 deg. or 20 deg. or more, below those points; and it is frozen to every object upon which it falls. The trade stratum, from which it descends, is not warmed by "radiation" or by ascending currents from a snow-clad surface, and during a cloudy day; nor by a "development of heat" at that particular altitude, but it has brought its heat from the South Atlantic, and imparts it to the rain which forms within it. There is every reason to believe that the counter-trade flows north in a regular descending plane, not materially differing from that of the line of perpetual snow. The descent of the latter is well ascertained to be from about 16,000 feet at the equator, to _the surface_ at the poles. The plane of the counter-trade is probably much the same, varying over different localities, from the varied action between it and the earth which we are considering; and probably both correspond with the increase of magnetic intensity. Lieutenant Maury, in an able and original article upon the circulation of the atmosphere, conceives the bands of comparative calms at the northern limits of the trades, which he appropriately terms the "_Calms of Cancer_," to be nodes in the circulation of the atmosphere, and that the upper or counter-trade here decends and becomes a surface wind from the S. W., as the N. E. trade is a surface wind; and that an upper current from the poles approaches and descends at the same node, to make the N. E. trade. But it is evident he adopted that conclusion too hastily, as he obviously did the conclusion that the calms of the horse latitudes were a type of all. We have seen that the latter are increased by a diversion of the counter-trade, and that they are avoided by making easting. So it may be observed that our upper current is a S. W. current, and no northerly upper current is visible, or exists over the country, however it may be in western Europe and the North Pacific, on the west of the magnetic poles, where cold, dry northerly and north-easterly winds are found. The origin and progress of storms withal demonstrates that no such node can exist. Two points have been made in relation to the course of the counter-trade in the tropics, and are relied upon to show its progress there to the N. E., which deserve consideration.