4 degrees to -4
degrees. These continental climates have therefore justly been termed
'excessive' by the great mathematician and physicist Buffon; and the
inhabitants who live in countries having such 'excessive' climates seem
almost condemned, as Dante expresses himself,
"A sofferir tormenti caldi e geli."*
[fiitbite] *Dante, 'Divina Commedia, Purgatorio', canto iii.
In no portion of the earth, neither in the Canary Islands, in Spain, nor in
the south of France, have I ever seen more luxuriant fruit, especially
grapes, than in Astrachan, near the shores of the Caspian Sea (46 degrees
21'). Although the mean annual temperature is about 48??degrees, the mean
summer heat rises to 70??degrees, as at Bordeaux, while not only there, but
also further to the south, as at Kislar on the mouth of the Terek (in the
latitude of Avignon and Rimini), the thermometer sinks in the winter to -13
degrees or -22 degrees.
Ireland, Guernsey, and Jersey, the peninsula of Brittany, the coasts of
Normandy, and of the south of England, present, by the mildness of their
winters, and by the low temperature and clouded sky of their summers, the
most striking contrast to the continental climate of the interior of Eastern
Europe. In the northeast of Ireland (54 degrees 56'), lying under the same
parallel of latitude as Konigsberg in Prussia, the myrtle blooms as
luxuriantly as in Portugal.
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