MICIIIGAlSr STATE FOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 485 



Though consigned to an early grave of refiitatiou, we are 

 not to speak slightingly of this forgotten theory. It has 

 accomplished its mission. The false has its mission to fulfill, 

 as well as the true. It has taught us to investigate with more 

 ..conscientious care our relations to Nature and her laws. In 

 the discussion attending this very fallacious theory, it was 

 brought out and proven, beyond the possibility of a peradveu- 

 ture, that Xature has surrounded us with a network of forces 

 and laws such as she has, perhaps, extended to no other portion 

 of the earth's surface. That not only has she endowed our 

 State with attractions that make her a peculiar and a favored 

 land, but she has, as it were, issued for our use alone a code of 

 " storm laws," under whose administration are meted out to 

 us the heat and cold, the winds and storms, of each successive 

 season. In other words, that Nature has given to Michigan a 

 meteorology distinctively her own. But it will be argued, As 

 you have but just denied to the State any geological history 

 peculiarly her own, on what principle can you ascribe to her 

 her own meteorology ? To ask the question is to answer it. 

 The question of Michigan's meteorology is determined by the 

 State as we find her to-day. It has little to do with her build- 

 ing or foundation in the historic past, but is marked out by 

 the features that now distinguish her, — her lakes and her for- 

 ests. Let us now spend an instant in the examination of these 

 features that thus mark her countenance; these controlling 

 agencies that distinguish her atmosphere from that of, perhaps, 

 any land the sun shines upon. I have mentioned her forests. 

 When whole volumes have been written on this one theme 

 alone, it were worse than folly to attempt, in a twenty-minutes 

 essay, to even designate the wonders accomplished by this her- 

 culean power. But two of its effects strike us at a glance, — 

 Temperature and Humidity. Upon the first head we can do 

 no better than to give the words of one eminent in the field of 

 scientific research : '• It has hardly yet been found practicable," 

 gays Marsh, "to absolutely measure, sum up, and equate the 

 vital influence of the forest and its products upon temperature, 



