,9o6] ABBE— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AS METEOROLOGIST. 125 



another portion since then ; but much has survived, and by search- 

 ing over the fragments that remain we find that FrankUn was always 

 inquiring into the ultimate causes, or as we now say, the physical 

 causes, of natural phenomena. We sometimes speak of him as an 

 electrician, but before he studied electricity and in fact during his 

 whole life he was seeking for explanations of atmospheric phe- 

 nomena, so that the records will bear me out in asserting that he 

 was among the first and best of the meteorologists, as distinguished 

 from the climatologists, of his day. He tested the forces of nature 

 and searched the motives of men. As his barometer and three 

 thermometers were always at hand in his library, and as he refers 

 frequently to the atmospheric pressure and temperature I shall not 

 be surprised to find some regular record of these elements among the 

 mass of his manuscripts that have yet to be examined, and I am 

 hopefully hunting for his earliest records of the climate of Phila- 

 delphia. All are familiar with his inventions of improvements in 

 the barometer, thermometer, and hygrometer ; all know his important 

 position as the discoverer of the progressive movement of the north- 

 east wind and rain advancing from Georgia to New England. We 

 must not forget that as postmaster at Philadelphia, 1737-53, and 

 Postmaster General for all the colonies (i753-i775), he was travel- 

 ing north or south incessantly, and handling reports from his local 

 postmasters that showed him the conditions of the roads and the 

 weather throughout the whole extent of his postal routes. No man 

 was more familiar than he with all the current features of the 

 country as to weather and crops, with the people and their mutual 

 relations to each other, with the business and resources of the 

 country. His argument as to the movement of the storm of 1743 

 was not a suspicion or guess, but a perfectly sound conclusion based 

 on special inquiries and reports ; it was precisely what we now call 

 a careful research. I have collected many forgotten items that will 

 go far to establish his reputation for solid work as a meteorologist, 

 but perhaps the most interesting paragraph, and the only one I need 

 here quote, relates to what are now called long-range forecasts of the 

 weather and the seasons. Although he had published his own 

 " Poor Richard's Almanac " for twenty years with its conjectures as 

 to the weather, based on planetary configurations, yet in every al- 



