Meteorology of England.
WITH respect to climate, England, from its situation With respect to climate, England, from its situation in the northern part of the temperate zone, cannot en joy long, or in great vividness, the genial influence of the sun ; and from its being an island, it is exposed to great variations of dryness and moisture, as well as of heat and cold, at all seasons ; indeed, its atmosphere is inclined to he chilly and damp, and is therefore not so favourable to the ripening as to the growth of the pro ductions of the earth. There is, perhaps, however, no country in Europe, which displays such a rich and beau tiful verdure, for such a large portion of the year ; since the rigour of its winter is seldom so great or so lasting as to destroy this verdure by cold, and the heats of its summer, interrupted by cooler weather, and refreshed by frequent showers, do not wither up the grass. On the continent of Europe, the period when the different seasons may be expected to arrive, the mode in which they will respectively commence, and their durations uninterrupted by unseasonable weather, can safely be predicted and relied upon; but in England it is quite the reverse. The winter months, indeed, are generally reckoned to be December, January, and February. The spring months, March, April, and May; the summer months, June, July, and August ; and the autumn months, September, October, and November ; but it never hap pens that the seasons respectively confine themselves to these months : not unfrequently in the month of Janua ry or February, a foreigner, unaccustomed to our climate, would imagine that spring was about to commence ; the air is mild and balmy; the buds begin to burst forth; the birds, which the rigour of winter had kept from sight, again make their appearance ; and the whole face of na ture seems to rejoice. This, perhaps, continues for the space of a week or two; when suddenly a gloomy change takes place, and winter resumes its power. Open and mild weather is also not unfrequently seen even in De cember, especially towards the beginning of that month ; indeed, in all parts of England, little or no frost is ex pected before Christmas; this is almost the only circum stance respecting an English winter that can be antici pated with tolerable confidence ; the nature of the win ter, with respect to severity, and the duration of it, those who have had the longest experience of our climate, and paid the greatest and most minute and particular atten tion to its changes, and to the apparent or probable signs of its changes, are totally unable to predict. In onc re
spect, however, our winters differ even when they are most severe, from the winters of countries which lie un der the same latitude on the continent; for while the sea-ports of Holland and Germany are every winter locked up with ice, those of England are never known to suffer this inconvenience.
We have said that December, January, and February, are generally reckoned the winter months ; but as the weather in the two latter is not unfrequently much mil , der than proper and regular winter weather, so, on the contrary, the weather of what are called the spring months, March, April, and May, is very frequently the reverse of spring weather. March is almost always a wet and boisterous month, except in those few cases in which the rigours of winter extend into it. Its moisture is so great, as to have given rise to the English proverb, " a peck of March dust is worth a king's ransom." The month of April is usually mild and moist, and spring again, after having made a feeble effort to resume its authority in January or February, attempts, but too frequently with as little success, to establish its power; for May, which on the continent is a month of uncom mon blandness, and to which, even in England, notwith standing our almost uniform disappointment, we ascribe the same quality, seldom appears, or at least advances far, before easterly winds set in, which, to the feelings, are as cold as the coldest winds during the frosts of win ter, and which most effectually in all cases check, and in many instances totally blast, the fruit vegetation.