-1859] WRITINGS OF JOSEPH HENRY. S3 



METEOKOLOGY IN ITS CONNECTION WITH AGRICULTDRE, 

 PART II. — GENERAL ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS. 



(Agricultural Report of Commissioner of Patents, for 1856 ; pp. 455-492.) 



In the last Agricultural Report of the Patent Office I gave 

 an account of the several systems of meteorology now co- 

 operating in this country to advance the science, and also 

 endeavored to show the importance of this branch of knowl- 

 edge in its connection with agriculture. I propose in this 

 Report and the subsequent ones to continue the subject, and 

 to present some of the physical laws on which meteorology 

 depends, the general principles at which it has arrived, and 

 their application to the peculiarities of the climate of the 

 United States. An exposition of this kind presented to the 

 farmer through the Agricultural Report it is thought will 

 serve to awaken a more lively interest in the subject, will tend 

 to diffuse a knowledge of the advantages of general principles, 

 and will convey information not readily accessible, and which 

 in reality does not elsewhere exist in the condensed form in 

 which it will be here given. 



Perhaps no branch of science has given rise to more specu- 

 lation or excited a greater amount of angry controversy 

 than that relating to the nature and interpretation of atmos- 

 pheric phenomena. The former maj'' arise from the depend- 

 ence of man for health and comfort on the state of the 

 weather, and the latter from the limited sphere of individual 

 observation to which the cultivators of this branch are gene- 

 rally confined. While the astronomer, without quitting his 

 observatory (if situated near the equator) can watch the 

 motions of all the heavenly bodies as they present themselves 

 in succession to his telescope, the meteorologist can take cog- 

 nizance only of the changes which occur immediately around 

 him, and hence the origin of partial views and imperfect 

 generalizations. Controversies in this science, as in most 

 others, may frequently however be referred to the partiality wo 

 entertain for the products of our own minds. Truth, as has 

 been properly said, belongs to mankind in general; our 

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