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Torquay 21.00 Douglas 13.45 Cowes 16.00 Weston-super-Mare 14.10 Scarborough 14.00 Clacton 6.25 Blackpool 12.07 Residuum of Local Peculiarities 3.13 100.00

In winter, when “Wee Macgreegors” and the like desert its waters, Rothesay becomes the Ventnor of Scotland, recommended by a sheltered western mildness, which indeed its own guide-book advocate has to qualify as “rather humid.” Even in ordinary winters it may bear comparison with South Devon or the Isle of Wight, while sometimes a whim of Nature has set the thermometer standing higher here than at Mentone. This mildness is attested by exotic plants in Lord Bute’s park, whose late owner, Disraeli’s “Lothair,” for a time maintained colonies of kangaroos, beavers, and other outlandish creatures. Whatever harsh things may be said of Eastern Scotland’s climate, the West Highland skies are more apt to be “soft,” and to snow only “whiles.” Some patriotic Scots go so far as to claim that their country is on the whole warmer than England, no part of the former being over forty miles from the Gulf Stream that so muggily wraps the islands of our far north.

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