[173] "It has been concluded that the dry land occupies about 49,800,000 square statute miles. This does not include the recently discovered tracts of land in the vicinity of the poles, and allowing for yet undiscovered land (which, however, can only exist in small quantity), if we assign 51,000,000 to the land, there will remain about 146,000,000 of square miles for the extent of surface occupied by the ocean."—Sir J. F. W. Herschel, Physical Geography, 1861, p. 19.
It does not appear to which category Herschel assigns the inland seas and the fresh-water lakes and rivers of the earth; and Mrs. Somerville, who states that the "dry land occupies an area of 38,000,000 of square miles," and that "the ocean covers nearly three fourths of the surface of the globe," is equally silent on this point.—Physical Geography, fifth edition, p. 30. On the following page, Mrs. Somerville, in a note, cites Mr. Gardner as her authority, and says that, "according to his computation, the extent of land is about 37,673,000 square British miles, independently of Victoria Continent; and the sea occupies 110,849,000. Hence the land is to the sea as 1 to 4 nearly." Sir John F. W. Herschel makes the area of dry land and ocean together 197,000,000 square miles; Mrs. Somerville, or rather Mr. Gardner, 148,522,000. I suppose Sir John Herschel includes the islands in his aggregate of the "dry land," and the inland waters under the general designation of the "ocean," and that Mrs. Somerville excludes both.
[174] It has been observed in Sweden that the spring, in many districts where the forests have been cleared off, now comes on a fortnight later than in the last century.—Asbjörnsen, Om Skovene i Norge, p. 101.
The conclusion arrived at by Noah Webster, in his very learned and able paper on the supposed change in the temperature of winter, read before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1799, was as follows: "From a careful comparison of these facts, it appears that the weather, in modern winters, in the United States, is more inconstant than when the earth was covered with woods, at the first settlement of Europeans in the country; that the warm weather of autumn extends further into the winter months, and the cold weather of winter and spring encroaches upon the summer; that, the wind being more variable, snow is less permanent, and perhaps the same remark may be applicable to the ice of the rivers. These effects seem to result necessarily from the greater quantity of heat accumulated in the earth in summer since the ground has been cleared of wood and exposed to the rays of the sun, and to the greater depth of frost in the earth in winter by the exposure of its uncovered surface to the cold atmosphere."—Collection of Papers by Noah Webster, p. 162.
[175] I have seen, in Northern New England, the surface of the open ground frozen to the depth of twenty-two inches, in the month of November, when in the forest earth no frost was discoverable; and later in the winter, I have known an exposed sand knoll to remain frozen six feet deep, after the ground in the woods was completely thawed.
——Det golde Strög i Afrika,
Der Intet voxe kan, da ei det regner,
Og, omvendt, ingen Regn kan falde, da
Der Intet voxer.
Paludan-Müller, Adam Homo, ii, 408.
Und Stürme brausen um die Wette
Vom Meer aufs Land, vom Land aufs Meer.
Goethe, Faust, Song of the Archangels.
[178] Études sur l'Économie Forestière, pp. 45, 46.