THE MOON'S INFLUENCE ON THE WEATHER. 57 



years. Daring the month of October, 1873, the average height of 

 the barometric column was 757.1 millimetres, and for the same month 

 in 1854 it was 757.2 millimetres; the barometric mean for the five 

 days between the 22d and the 28th was, in 1873, 750.7 millimetres, and 

 in 1854, 748.7 millimetres; the minimum was reached, in 1873, on Oc- 

 tober 23d, and in 1854 on October 25th, being in the former case 734.9 

 millimetres, and in the latter, 734.5 millimetres. In 1873 the maxi- 

 mum was reached in the evening of October 28th 773.7 millimetres, 

 and in 1854 at noon of the 28th 774.9 millimetres. The weather 

 was also the same in both years from the 3d to the 7th, and from the 

 21st to the 27th of October. From the 5th to the 7th there were fre- 

 quent and heavy falls of rain ; on the 7th, in 1873, and on the 5th, in 

 1854, there were violent thunder-storms. On both years from the 

 21st to .the 25th the atmosphere was in a state of violent disturbance, 

 tne barometric column being very low. And here we may state that 

 there was new moon at 11 a. m. on October 21, 1873, and at 9 p. m. 

 on October 21, 1854; that in 1873 the southern lunistice occurred at 

 10 p. M. of the 26th, and in 1854 at 9 p. m. of the 26th; and that 

 the moon's declination at the time was about 27 south. 



Further, from the 13th to the 16th of November, 1873, the distri- 

 bution of atmospheric pressure over Europe and the state of the 

 weather were similar to what they were on the same days in 1854. 

 The fearful ravages wrought by the storms in the Black Sea on the 

 days between the 13th and the 16th of November,1854 (the Crimean 

 War being then in progress), will render those days ever memorable. 

 The numerous shipwrecks in the sea of Azof, and the loss of English 

 and French war-ships in the Black Sea on the 13th and 14th, showed 

 how desirable and necessary a thing it was that there should be found 

 some means of warning seafarers of the approach of storms. It was 

 these disasters which gave occasion to the establishment of storm- 

 signals. From the 13th to the 15th of November, 1873, after a period 

 of calm, with high barometer over the greater part of Northwestern 

 Europe, we find succeeding a similar barometric minimum, and a 

 storm area advancing across the Mediterranean toward the Black 

 Sea. 



At any given point of the earth's surface the state of the weather 

 always depends on the prevailing air-currents. The annual and the 

 secular periodic changes of the oceanic and the atmospheric currents 

 are repeated in the weather-changes. And on the phenomena which, 

 however imperfectly, establish this periodicity, is based the universal 

 belief that the moon has an influence on the weather. The researches 

 and calculations which have been made by meteorologists to deter- 

 mine the periodicity of weather phenomena, and the influence of the 

 moon upon the latter, have hitherto been fruitless, and this simply 

 because the observations of single stations only have been taken into 

 account. From observations made at one point it is impossible to 



