212 PROGRESS OF METEOROLOGY IN 1889. 



II.— GENERAL TREATISES; CLIMATE; WEATHER PREDICTIONS AND 



VERIFICATIONS. 



Contributions to Meteorology, by Elias Loomis. Chapters ii and iii 

 of Professor Loomis's revisiou of his Contributions to Meteorology have 

 been issued during 1889. — Chapter i, previously published in Vol. iii 

 of the Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, treats of areas 

 of low pressure — their form, magnitude, direction, and velocity' of move- 

 ment. Chapter ii treats, similarly, of areas of high pressure, and of 

 the relation of areas of high pressure to areas of low pressure. Chap- 

 ter III, which completes the revision, treats of rainfall ; the conditions 

 favorable and the conditions unfavorable to rain-fall are enumerated, 

 and their application is shown in a survey of the niore striking feat- 

 ures of the mean annual rain-fall of different countries. Special study 

 is made of individual rain-falls in the United States, in Europe, and 

 over the Atlantic Ocean, and fruitful suggestions are offered towards 

 a physical explanation of the characteristic features of individual cases. 



In this revision' the earlier series of papers are reduced to a more 

 systematic form, new researches and results are introduced based on 

 later and more extended data, and the text is accompanied by a large 

 number of elegantly printed illustrative plates. Chapter iii is accom- 

 panied by a rain-fall map of the world and by rain-fall maps of India 

 and California, which present features of special interest. The whole 

 forms a great compendium of meteorological results derived by statis- 

 tical methods and inductive processes from the modern weather map. 



Meteorologia Gencrale, Luigi de March!, Milano, 1888, 160 pages. — 

 The author has brought together in this brief compendium, in a thor- 

 oughly scientific and quite original way, the most important principles 

 of meteorology. The book is divided into four parts. The first, enti- 

 tled "Air and the Atmosphere," treats of the physical properties of 

 the air. The second part treats of the conditions of equilibrium and 

 of motion in the air, and is composed of three chapters : Air pressure 

 and wind ; causes of motion, laws of motion. The third part takes 

 up the meteorological factors which depend upon the normal distribu- 

 tion of temperature and the periodic oscillations of temperature and 

 their consequences. The fourth part embraces irregular meteorological 

 phenomena and the art of weather i)rediction. In this section the 

 paths of cyclones over Europe are shown on a chart, and their easterly 

 movement is ascribed to the difference in density of the warm easterly 

 and cold westerly winds. 



Treatise on Meteorological Apparatus and Methods, by Cleveland 

 Abbe, Annual Report of the Chief Signal Officer, 1887, Part 2.— This 

 exhaustive work treats in five sections the subject of the measurement 

 of temperature, pressure, the motion of the air, aqueous vapor, and 

 precipitation. The section on thermometry opens with a chapter on 

 the history of the thermometer, and then proceeds to discuss the theory 



