58 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



by which the sailor is taught the important lesson, which has saved 

 thousands of lives and millions of property, namely, that of finding 

 the direction of the centre of the cyclone, and of determining the 

 course in which he must steer in order to extricate himself from the 

 destructive violence of this fearful scourge of the ocean. To the 

 agriculturist they indicate the character of the climate of the country, 

 and enable him, with certainty, to select the articles of culture best 

 adapted to the temperature and moisture of the region, and which, 

 in the course of a number of years, will insure him the most profita- 

 ble returns for his labor. They furnish the statistics of the occur- 

 rence of sterile years and of devastating storms, which may serve as 

 the bases on which to found insurance institutions for protection 

 against the failure of crops, and thus give to the husbandman the 

 same certainty in his pursuits as that possessed by the merchant or 

 thc'ship-owner. They may also afford warning of the approach of 

 severe frosts and violent storms in time to guard, at least in "some 

 degree, against their injurious effects. To the physician, a knowledge 

 of such results as can be obtained from an extended system of obser- 

 vations is of great importance, not only in regard to the immediate 

 practice of his art, but also to the improvement of his science. The 

 peculiar diseases of a region are principally dependent on its climate; 

 an extreme variation of temperature in a large city is invariably at- 

 tended with an increase of the number of deaths. The degree and 

 variation of the moisture at different times and in different places 

 have also a great influence on diseases, and the more the means of 

 studying the connexion of these elements and the corresponding con- 

 dition of the human body are multiplied, the more will the art and 

 the science of medicine be improved. I may mention that scarcely 

 a week passes at the Institution in which application is not made for 

 meteorological information relative to different parts of this country, 

 with the hope to improve the condition, if not restore the health, of 

 some patient. The knowledge, however, which at present exists as 

 to the connexion of climate and disease, particularly in relation to 

 our own countr}^, is, in comparison to what might be obtained, of 

 little significance. 



No other part of the world can at all compare with this country in 

 the conditions most favorable to the advancement of meteorology, by 

 means of a well-organized and properly sustained system of combined 

 observations ; such a system extending from east to west more than 

 two thousand miles would embrace in its investigation all the phe- 

 nomena of the great upper current of the return trade-wind, which. 



