296 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



daily precipitation within the areas of storms like those just referred 

 to is only three inches, it is evident that Mr, Elliott's calculation of the 

 mechanical force daily exerted in the work of evaporation falls short 

 of expressing the force exerted in the work of precipitation during a 

 day's march of a cyclone. The latter is, however, but one of the 

 many tremendous agencies engaged in the development of a storm of 

 ordinary magnitude in the intratropical regions. In the extratropical 

 and high latitudes, cyclones are much more extensive, " being seldom 

 less than GOO miles in diameter, but oftener two or three times that 

 amount, or even more " (Buchan) ; while the waves of the sea, driven 

 by their winds, beat upon the seacoast, as Mr. Stevenson, the well- 

 known English engineer, has estimated, with the almost incredible 

 force of " 6,000 pounds on the square foot." In the hurricane of last 

 August, the winds on the North Carolina coast blew at the rate of 

 from 138 to 165 miles an hour. 



In citing these illustrations of the storm-phenomena which modern 

 meteorology is charged with investigating, we have not alluded to the 

 equally important yet far grander phenomena of " anti-cyclones," or 

 those " atmospheric waves " of high pressure which, emanating from 

 the higher latitudes, submerge a whole continent at once — around 

 whose borders cyclones move as diminutive eddies playing around a 

 rock in mid-stream. But enough has been said to show the imj)erative 

 necessity for the prosecution of wide-extended or international research 

 (including of course oceanic observations) if the laws of weather are 

 ever to be discovered and defined. In no branch of physics is it so 

 true, as in that of weather-lore, " a little learning is a dangerous thing." 

 An approximation to the conception and study of the atmospheric ma- 

 chine as a unit is the sine qua non of all future advance in this knowl- 

 edge. Phenomena such as we have just glanced at, by their immen- 

 sity and by the intensity of the forces which resistlessly propel them 

 across seas and continents, will for ever defy adequate investigation, 

 save by an army of observers, acting simultaneously, both on the ocean 

 and on the land, whose outposts stretch from the rising to the setting 

 sun and from the equator to the polar circle. For, as another has so for- 

 cibly and felicitously said : " The atmosphere, unlike the ocean, is undi- 

 vided and uninterrupted; and every change of state, in any part of its 

 expanse, sends forth a pulsation of energy which is speedily felt far and 

 wide." If the oracles of Him by whom are all things declare that he 

 spreads " the cloud of dew in the heat of harvest," who " gathereth the 

 winds in his fists," and once hushed the roar of the Galilean tempest, 

 well may these wonders, ever fresh from his hand, enlist the earnest 

 and inspiring study and observation of intelligent men everywhere. 

 Our favored planet, not like the airless moon, is folded in the kindly bo- 

 som of an atmosphere which, while ministering nourishment to man and 

 accommodating itself to all his movements and vicissitudes, interposes 

 as his shield against the fiery influences of the solar system, even to 



