JOURNAL 
OF THE 
WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Vou. 13 FEBRUARY 19, 1923 No. 4 
METEOROLOGY .—-The murmur of the forest and the roar of the 
mountain. W. J. Humpureys, U. 8. Weather Bureau. 
INTRODUCTION 
Certainly for many centuries, perhaps from even the cave and 
stone age when men first began to associate one phenomenon with ~ 
another, the murmur of the forest and the roar of the mountain 
have each been recognized as a meteorological symphony with the 
drive of the wind and the stress of the storm = its theme. As some 
one has pleasantly put it, 
“The whispering grove tells of a storm to come.” 
And Lucan, the Roman poet, nineteen hundred years ago, solemnly 
warned us: 
“Nor less I fear from that hoarse, hollow roar 
In leafy groves and on the sounding shore.”’ 
—Rowe’s translation. 
Ages before this in turn Elijah told Ahab to hurry and eat and get 
down from Mount Carmel “for there is a sound of abundance of 
rain.” And this sound, it would seem, could have been none other 
than the murmur of the forest, mingled, perhaps, with the roar of the 
mountain. ‘And it came to pass m the mean while, that the heaven 
was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain.”’ 
Such, then, has been the recognized weather significance through the 
ages of these mysterious aeolian effects. In many regions it is now, 
as it has long been, and as it indefinitely must continue, a common 
thing to refer to the “roaring” of a mountain as an indication of a 
general storm within six to twelve hours; and the “sign” is an excep- 
1 Presidential address. 
49 
