s losses, the influence of _counter-currents from above_, coming
from the west and the south-west, with a high temperature, account
for this anomaly, which, in winter, represents the normal state of
the most northern parts of the European continent." (Walker's Kaemtz,
p. 515.--Note.)

Mr. Walker is the only author, so far as I know, who has suspected the
true cause of the phenomenon, viz.: "currents from above coming from the
west and south-west, with a high temperature;" but the caloric theory
"sticks like a burr," and he adheres also to the idea that a snow-clad
surface, in the absence of the sun, can aid, by radiation, in warming the
atmosphere for a distance of several hundred yards above it, increasing
the warmth as the distance from the earth increases!

This contrast between the counter-trade and the adjacent atmosphere, in
winter, in latitudes as low as that of the Brocken, is probably heightened
by the increased warmth of the former, at that season. The S. E. trades
then form under a vertical sun, and the difference of temperature can not
be less than from 6 deg. to 8 deg.. Not unfrequently in winter and spring the rain
will fall with a temperature of 50 deg. to 55 deg., when the atmosphere near the
earth is 10 deg. or 20 deg. or more, below those points; and it is frozen to every
object upon which it falls. The trade stratum, from which it descends, is
not warmed by "radiation" or by ascending currents from a snow-clad
surface, and during a cloudy day; nor by a "development of heat" at that
particular altitude, but it has brought its heat from the South Atlantic,
and imparts it to the rain which forms within it. There is every reason to
believe that the counter-trade flows north in a regular descending plane,
not materially differing from that of the line of perpetual snow. The
descent of the latter is well ascertained to be from about 16,000 feet at
the equator, to _the surface_ at the poles. The plane of the counter-trade
is probably much the same, varying over different localities, from the
varied action between it and the earth which we are considering; and
probably both correspond with the increase of magnetic intensity.

Lieutenant Maury, in an able and original article upon the circulation of
the atmosphere, conceives the bands of comparative calms at the northern
limits of the trades, which he appropriately terms the "_Calms of
Cancer_," to be nodes in the circulation of the atmosph