62 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



of the forecast are practically correct. The presence of the 

 Chief Signal Officer at the Meteorological Congress held in 

 Vienna, in September last, secured the co-operation of a large 

 number of the individual countries of Europe in the system 

 of synchronous observations established in the United States. 

 Among the appendices to the report of the Chief Signal Offi- 

 cer, we notice the following as of special scientific interest : 



Tables are given of monthly, annual, and mean pressures and 

 temperatures; daily maximum and minimum temperatures; 

 monthly and annual rain-fall ; and the frequency of winds for 

 all the Signal Service stations. The observations made at 

 St. Paul's Island, Aleutian Archipelago, are given in detail, as 

 also are those made on the sides of Mount Washington and 

 Mount Mitchell. The altitudes of all the stations, above sea- 

 level, have been very carefully deduced by Professor Abbe, 

 from the vast mass of railroad levelings accumulated by the 

 office, and are given in detail. The report of Sergeant Myer, 

 of the Polaris expedition, and the report of Professor Abbe 

 on the great Nova Scotia cyclone, are also introduced in full. 

 A very complete table is given, by Professor Lapham, of the 

 disasters occurring to American shipping on the lakes. Ser- 

 jeant-observer Mcintosh contributes the details of a tornado 

 in Iowa. This paper is probably the fullest and most valuable 

 monograph on this subject to be found in meteorological lit- 

 erature. The report concludes with a chronological list of all 

 the auroras recorded by the Signal Service observers from 

 1870 to 1873, inclusive, compiled by Professor Abbe. 



TEMPEEATUEE OE ATLANTIC SUEFACE WATER. 



For many years the Poyal Meteorological Institute of the 

 Netherlands has systematically labored in the arrangement 

 and study of an immense mass of observations on the tem- 

 perature of the wind and the currents of the ocean. The In- 

 stitute has recently elucidated the subject of the physics of 

 the ocean by the publication of a series of charts, detailing 

 the temperature of its surface water for each month and 

 year over that portion of the North Atlantic included be- 

 tween thirty and fifty-two degrees north latitude, and zero 

 and fifty degrees west longitude, the region, therefore, most 

 frequently traversed by the vessels of Europe and America. 

 Over 51,000 observations made by the navy of Holland, and 



