192 TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



world can even begin to lie like facts, and figures, and scripture, when 

 you can but once contrive to get them at it ? Their general reputation 

 for veracity relieves them of all suspicion ; and yet they have been uni- 

 formly placed at the very bottom of all the grandest schemes of folly and 

 villainy the world has ever seen. This leads me to note some of the de- 

 fects in our scientific observation of facts in meteorology, so far forth as 

 our horticultural and agricultural interests are concerned ; and first in 

 regard to the rain gauge. It is self-evident that, for our puropses, it may 

 be wholly immaterial what particular amount of rain may fall in any given 

 year or season or month, unless we also know its distribution in respect 

 to time. For all our purposes, the years or seasons of the very heaviest 

 rain-falls, as a whole, by the rain gauge, may be our seasons of most de- 

 structive droughts, and vice versa. 



For example, about the fourth of July last, we had here in Jackson- 

 ville thirteen inches of rain-fall, by the rain guage, in a single night. This 

 beat down the ground almost as hard as a brick. Then came on a 

 drought of two months, in which there was not for once enough rain to 

 wet through the hard, beaten, and suddenly dried and baked crust of the 

 earth. 



The result was our potato and similar crops were utterly destroyed ; 

 and the corn crop diminished nearly one-half by drought ; although that 

 one single shower of rain, if well distributed in time, would have been 

 amply sufficient for crops of all sorts for a whole three months, and would 

 have carried one corn crop safely through, even its whole period of 

 growth, from planting to gathering. Probably from twelve to twenty 

 inches of rain, well distributed, would give us all the water in a year any of 

 our crops ever need ; while all great deluges which count up on the scale of 

 the rain gauge only make matters worse, and all the more, leave our crops 

 to perish with drought. After all, much of the co-called philosophical rea- 

 soning, from such mere statistical data of the rain gauge, is totally sophis- 

 tical and fallacious. The same remarks of course apply in principle to 

 the records of the thermometer, barometer, hydrometer, etc., etc. Like 

 scripture texts, it depends wholly upon who uses them, and the use made 

 of them, whether the records tell us any truth or not. 



Our means of observing the courses of the winds are evidently wholly 

 incomplete and unsatisfactory. We are observing the stream of air as it runs 

 over its rough, hilly and uneven bottom, the earth, liable to be turned 

 aside from its general course, and throw its local eddies in all directions, 

 by causes which we do know, and many which we do not know. 



Its upper currents are more generally running either across, or 

 directly opposite, to its lower ones, as any one who watches the movements 

 of the various strata of the clouds it bears along with it can clearly see. 

 Our little vanes, perched at low altitudes above the earth, are often no sure 

 indication of the general drift, even of the lower current, while they tell 

 us nothing at all of any of the upper or higher ones. Could we not have 

 a small balloon, somewhat like the one children throw up, anchored to 

 the earth by a twine, with streamers attached to both the balloon and 



