WISLIZENUS — ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY. 295 



essential difference in the prevailing winds; the S.E. was our 

 prevalent wind as usual and in about the same quantity. The 

 temperature of the year answered the usual mean. Relative 

 humidity was several degrees lower than usual, the year be- 

 ing uncommonly dry. But less humidity of the atmosphere 

 ought rather to promote the accumulation of positive electri- 

 city, since less of it is carried by humidity to the ground. 

 I have therefore come to the conclusion, that the local mete- 

 orological phenomena do not account for the less develop- 

 ment of electricity in 1864. The cause for it may perhaps 

 be found in the accumulation of electricity hundreds and 

 thousands of miles distant from us, so that a local ebb here 

 may corrrespond with a local flood in some other part of our 

 globe. I had many times occasion to observe how easily 

 the equilibrium in the quantity of the usual atmospheric 

 electricity is disturbed. Quite distant rain-falls and thunder- 

 storms often make the electricity here disappear at once ; 

 still more so snow-falls. In the winter, when strong positive 

 electricity with fair and cold weather suddenly declines, or 

 disappears entirely, without any appreciable local cause, I 

 have often predicted a cotemporaneous considerable snow- 

 fall at great distances, and the telegraph generally confirmed 

 my supposition from such localities as Cairo, Cincinnati, Chi- 

 cago, Buffalo, and even New York. The accumulation of 

 positive electricity there, as is usual with snow-falls, seemed 

 to have produced a vacuum here. The sensibility of the 

 electrometer in such changes is far greater than that of the 

 barometer. Dry storms, too, of no great violence and of more 

 local extent, affect often the electrometer, while the barome- 

 ter scarcely shows any fluctuation. But in strong gales, that 

 are invariably accompanied by sudden depression of the ba- 

 rometer, the electrometer confirms and corroborates the ba- 

 rometer by a sudden change into most intense negative elec- 

 tricity, lasting during the gale. The electrometer becomes 

 thus a most valuable aid to the practical purposes of the ba- 

 rometer. But, unfortunately, the practical application of me- 

 teorological instruments for predicting storms is too much 

 overlooked in this country. While in England they have 

 already established a Meteorological Bureau at the Admiral- 

 ty, where they receive daily telegraphic reports of meteoro- 

 logical changes from all parts of the kingdom, and, at a threat- 

 ening outbreak of a storm, send telegraphic warnings all along 

 the sea coast, we, light-minded Americans, trifling with hu- 

 man life as well as property, wait quietly till the storm breaks 

 upon us, injuring every year our immense shipping interest 

 on the lakes and on the sea coast by gales that might have 

 been foreseen and predicted. Generally these gales rise in the 

 west or south-west, and progress in a curved lint' over the vast 

 extent of our country to the north and the north-east, where 



