The statements so frequently advanced, although unsupported by measurements, that since the first European settlements in New England, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the destruction of many forests on both sides of the Alleghanys, has rendered the climate more equable,—making the winters milder and the summers cooler,—are now generally discredited. No series of thermometric observations worthy of confidence extend further back in the United States than seventy-eight years. We find from the Philadelphia observations that from 1771 to 1824, the mean annual heat has hardly risen 2°.7 Fahr.;—an increase that may fairly be ascribed to the extension of the town, its greater population, and to the numerous steam-engines. This annual increase of temperature may also be owing to accident, for in the same period I find that there was an increase of the mean winter temperature of 2° Fahr.; but with this exception the seasons had all become somewhat warmer. Thirty-three years’ observations at Salem in Massachusetts show scarcely any difference, the mean of each one oscillating within 1° of Fahrenheit, about the mean of the whole number; and the winters of Salem, instead of having been rendered more mild, as conjectured, from the eradication of the forests, have become colder by 4° Fahr. during the last thirty-three years.[EC] As the east coast of the United States may be compared, in equal latitudes, with the Siberian and Chinese eastern coasts of Europe, in respect to mean annual temperature, so the western coasts of Europe and America have also very justly been compared together. I will here only adduce a few instances from the western region of the Pacific, for two of which, viz., Sitka. (New Archangel,) in Russian America, and Fort George. (having the same latitudes respectively as Gottenburg and Geneva,) we are indebted to Admiral Lütke’s voyage of circumnavigation. Iluluk and Danzig are situated in about the same parallel of latitude, and although the mean temperature of Iluluk, owing to its insular climate and the cold sea current contiguous to it, is lower than that of Danzig, the winters of the former are milder than those of the Baltic city. 33°.3 Sitka Lat. 57° 3′ Long. 135° 16′ W. 44°.6 ————— 55°.0 31°.6 Gottenburg Lat. 57° 41′ Long. 11° 59′ E. 46°.4 ————— 62°.4 37°.8 Fort George Lat. 46° 18′ Long. 123° 58′ W. 50°.2 ————— 60.°0