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150 CHANNEL i s l a n d s :
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the trees are felled; but even then, the stocks are left
so high that, with the aid of the lofty embankments,
they effectually impede all ventilation. Other causes
yet remain behind: an imperfect system of drainage;
or no drainage at a ll: the prevalence of winds from the
south-west, blowing directly up the Channel from
across the Atlantic ocean—impregnated with moisture
and with saline particles that cause the moisture to be
more slowly dissipated into vapour : the great recession
of the tide at low water, leaving all around the island
a vast extent of bare rocks and sands; from which
saline vapours largely arise, in consequence of the
comparative w'drmth of the temperature even during
the winter months; while these vapours are scattered
in all directions by currents of air arising from the
great diversity of the island in hill and dale.
The town of St. Helier too, the great resort of the
residents, is perhaps, in this respect unfavourably
placed ;—standing on the southern shore of the island,
and, so to speak, at the neck of a spine of valleys that
intersect it through its whole extent. From its southern
aspect therefore, as well as from its position at the
thin margin of a wedge of land that gradually slopes
down to the sea from a distance of three or four miles
northward, it is not improbable that the .clouds and
vapours are attracted over it by the meridian sun; and
are in part intercepted, on arriving at the shore, by
those lofty forts that block up the town towards the
se a; and that so materially obstruct the free transmission
of air, and the dissipation of unwholesome fogs
and vapours.
The conclusion to whicli by reasoning a priori we
should be led, respecting the humidity of this climate,
hygrométrie observations have long fully established.
The consideration of the manner in which extreme
humidity of the atmosphere acts in predisposing the
body to attacks of rheumatism, or in actually exciting
them, would belong to an abstract work on the science
of medicine. That such however is the fact, is known
to all: while it must also be admitted, that this humidity
is rendered still more general in these parts, by
the comparative warmth of the climate during the
winter months. For here, we rarely witness any of
those long and bracing frosts that are so invigorating
to the body in the more northern latitudes ; and which,
even in Holland, are found to dissipate for months, the
languid fogs of winter.
I have been the more minute in pointing out the
causes of that humidity, so universally felt and complained
of, particularly by the residents, from being
persuaded that much may be done towards removing it,
by the resources of art. This will be obvious by
glancing back to the above enumeration of its causes ;
for, although the local legislature of Jersey, m all its
wisdom and omnipotence, is unable to change the
course of the winds, or to command the out-goings of
the ocean, yet, I trust I shall be pardoned for stating
my belief, that it is very possible for that patriotic
body to effect much. It is competent, for instance, in
that assembly to pass laws for establishing a system of
universal drainage ; to order the felling of teees and
the lopping of branches that block up the highways;
and to cause the removal of those lofty embankments,
that everywhere intercept the view of the traveller ;
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