[15] The nomenclature of meteorology is vague and sometimes equivocal. Not long since, it was suspected that the observers reporting to a scientific institution did not agree in their understanding of the mode of expressing the direction of the wind prescribed by their instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, that very many of them used the names of the compass-points to indicate the quarter from which the wind blew, while others employed them to signify the quarter toward which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some instances, the observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of course their tables of the wind were of no value.
"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the east; whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows toward the east."—Physical Geography, p. 229.
There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably originated in a confusion of the terminations -wardly and -erly, both of which are modern. The root of the former ending implies the direction to or to-ward which motion is supposed. It corresponds to, and is probably allied with, the Latin versus. The termination -erly is a corruption or softening of -ernly, easterly for easternly, and many authors of the seventeenth century so write it. In Hakluyt (i, p. 2), easterly is applied to place, "easterly bounds," and means eastern. In a passage in Drayton, "easterly winds" must mean winds from the east; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses northerly for northern. Hakewell says: "The sonne cannot goe more southernely from vs, nor come more northernely towards vs." Holland, in his translation of Pliny, referring to the moon has: "When shee is northerly," and "shee is gone southerly." Richardson, to whom I am indebted for the above citations, quotes a passage from Dampier where westerly is applied to the wind, but the context does not determine the direction. The only example of the termination in -wardly given by this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means toward the west.
Shakspeare, in Hamlet (v. ii), uses northerly wind for wind from the north. Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were they known to the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of direction in -an or -en, -ern and -weard, the last always meaning the point toward which motion is supposed, the others that from which it proceeds.
We use an east wind, an eastern wind, and an easterly wind, to signify the same thing. The two former expressions are old, and constant in meaning; the last is recent, superfluous, and equivocal. See Appendix, [No. 2].
[16] I do not here speak of the vast prairie region of the Mississippi valley, which cannot properly be said ever to have been a field of British colonization; but of the original colonies, and their dependencies in the territory of the present United States, and in Canada. It is, however, equally true of the Western prairies as of the Eastern forest land, that they had arrived at a state of equilibrium, though under very different conditions.
[17] The great fire of Miramichi in 1825, probably the most extensive and terrific conflagration recorded in authentic history, spread its ravages over nearly six thousand square miles, chiefly of woodland, and was of such intensity that it seemed to consume the very soil itself. But so great are the recuperative powers of nature, that, in twenty-five years, the ground was thickly covered again with trees of fair dimensions, except where cultivation and pasturage kept down the forest growth.
[18] The English nomenclature of this geographical feature does not seem well settled. We have bog, swamp, marsh, morass, moor, fen, turf moss, peat moss, quagmire, all of which, though sometimes more or less accurately discriminated, are often used interchangeably, or are perhaps employed, each exclusively, in a particular district. In Sweden, where, especially in the Lappish provinces, this terr-aqueous formation is very extensive and important, the names of its different kinds are more specific in their application. The general designation of all soils permanently pervaded with water is Kärr. The elder Læstadius divides the Kärr into two genera: Myror (sing. myra), and Mossar (sing. mosse). "The former," he observes, "are grass-grown, and overflowed with water through almost the whole summer; the latter are covered with mosses and always moist, but very seldom overflowed." He enumerates the following species of Myra, the character of which will perhaps be sufficiently understood by the Latin terms into which he translates the vernacular names, for the benefit of strangers not altogether familiar with the language and the subject: 1. Hömyror, paludes graminosæ. 2. Dy, paludes profundæ. 3. Flarkmyror, or proper kärr, paludes limosæ. 4. Fjällmyror, paludes uliginosæ. 5. Tufmyror, paludes cæspitosæ. 6. Rismyror, paludes virgatæ. 7. Starrängar, prata irrigata, with their subdivisions, dry starrängar or risängar, wet starrängar and fräkengropar. 8. Pölar, laeunæ. 9. Gölar, fossæ inundatæ. The Mossar, paludes turfosæ, which are of great extent, have but two species: 1. Torfmossar, called also Mossmyror and Snottermyror, and, 2. Björnmossar.
The accumulations of stagnant or stagnating water originating in bogs are distinguished into Trāsk, stagna, and Tjernar or Tjärnar (sing. Tjern or Tjärn), stagnatiles. Trāsk are pools fed by bogs, or water emanating from them, and their bottoms are slimy; Tjernar are small Träsk situated within the limits of Mossar.—L. L. Læstadius, om Möjligheten af Uppodlingar i Lappmarken, pp. 23, 24.
[19] Although the quantity of bog land in New England is less than in many other regions of equal area, yet there is a considerable extent of this formation in some of the Northeastern States. Dana (Manual of Geology, p. 614) states that the quantity of peat in Massachusetts is estimated at 120,000,000 cords, or nearly 569,000,000 cubic yards, but he does not give either the area or the depth of the deposits. In any event, however, bogs cover but a small percentage of the territory in any of the Northern States, while it is said that one tenth of the whole surface of Ireland is composed of bogs, and there are still extensive tracts of undrained marsh in England.