THE ANNUAL MEETING. 15? 



dating them with very similar explanations and suggestions. Yet my own 

 name is not once mentioned in the paper, nor would the reader infer that Mr. 

 Secretary Howard was not absolutely the first man to publish these discoveries 

 and conclusions. 



My popular paper in Harper's Magazine was re-published in Der Michigan 

 Wegweiser, at Hamburg, Germany, a periodical established to promote immi- 

 gration into our State. It was also re-published in the scientific journal en- 

 titled Zeitschrift der oster reichischen Gesellschaft fur Meteorologie, or Journal 

 of the Austrian Society for Meteorology, at Vienna, volume viii, p. 40, Febru- 

 ary 1, 1873. An abstract of my paper on the " Isothermals of the Lake 

 Region" was also published in this journal, volume vii, p. 351. 



The report drawn up by Mr. S. 13. McCracken on the resources of Michigan,* 

 for use at the centennial exposition of 1876, draws a large supply of facts and 

 generalizations from the papers previously published by myself ; and for this 

 indebtedness due acknowledgments are made. The report of the State board 

 of health for 1878, contains an extended and thorough presentation of the 

 "climate and topography" of the lower peninsula of Michigan, by Dr. 

 Henry F. Lyster, f who, while drawing extensively from the published results 

 of my studies in the geology, topography and climate of the State, gives 

 adequate credit for materials used, and accords to myself due priority in 

 the disclosure of the peculiarities of our climate. Dr. Lyster, in a few pages, 

 takes the cream of a body of results which I had based on months of labor 

 and thousands of calculated means. 



In numerous other sanitary, pomological and agricultural proceedings, I 

 have found these generalizations cited and re-produced. I am, therefore, 

 encouraged to believe that I have not misconceived their importance. This 

 belief is strengthened by the spontaneous request of the State horticultural 

 society to read a paper on the climate of the State — that factor in the fruit- 

 raiser's operations which is most completely independent of all human control. 



The foregoing statements concern the history of investigation on this sub- 

 ject, and are important to be made for the sake of preserving the record ; and 

 also, for the purpose of indicating where the members of this society may find 

 fuller details on the climate of the State than it is my purpose to present on 

 this occasion. 



Before my own researches on this subject, no one had as much as suggested 

 the great amount of the influence of Lake Michigan upon our climate ; and no 

 one, so far as I am aware, had subjected the recognized influence of any of the 

 great lakes to the test of exact statistics. Dr. J. P. Kirtland, of Cleveland, 

 had published a note on the influence of Lake Erie, but aside from the phe- 

 nomena connected with the growth of vegetation, and the presence of southern 

 birds and insects, he recorded no exact data beyond a few single observations. J 

 He states that killing frosts are about a month later on the lake shore than in 

 the interior, and that, in a case of extreme cold, the thermometer marked 

 about six degrees higher at Cleveland than at points some miles back from the 

 lake. Mr. Loren Blodgett, at the commencement of my own researches, had 

 published a "Climatology of the United States," || embodying a vast amount of 

 exact information ; but his isothermal lines march across our peninsula, and 



*8. B. McCracken : The State of Michigan, embracing sketches of its History, Position, Resources 

 and Industries, 1876, 8 vo. 136 pp. 



tSixth annual report of the secretary of State board of health of the State of Michigan, pp. 

 167-250. 



$ J. P. Kirtland, Am. Jour. Sci., II., xiii., 215 and 204. 



|| L. Blodget: Climatology of the United States and of the Temperate Latitudes of the North 

 American Continent, 8 vo. pp. 536, with charts. Philadelphia, 1857. 



