24 UE"CEETAI]SrTT OF MODEEN METEOROLOGY. 



There is one branch of research which is of the utmost import* 

 ance in reference to these questions, but which, from the great 

 diflSculty of direct observation upon it, has been less successfully 

 studied than almost any other problem of physical science. I re- 

 fer to the proportions between precipitation, superficial drainage, 

 absorption and evaporation. Precise actual measurement of these 

 quantities upon even a single acre of ground is impossible ; and 

 in all cabinet experiments on the subject, the conditions of the 

 surface observed are so different from those which occur in na- 

 ture, that we can not safely reason from one case to the other. 

 In nature, the inclination and exposm*e of the ground, the degree 



tion did not agree in their understanding of the mode of expressing the direc- 

 tion of the wind prescribed by their instructions. It was found, upon inquiry, 

 that very many of them used the names of the compass-points to indicate the 

 quarter /wm which the wind blew, while others employed them to signify the 

 quarter towards which the atmospheric currents were moving. In some in- 

 stances, the observers were no longer within the reach of inquiry, and of 

 course their tables of the wind were of no value. 



"Winds," says Mrs. Somerville, "are named from the points whence they 

 blow, currents exactly the reverse. An easterly wind comes from the east j 

 whereas an easterly current comes from the west, and flows towards the east." 

 — Physical Oeography, p. 229. 



There is no philological ground for this distinction, and it probably orig- 

 inated in a confusion of the terminations -wardly and -erly, both of which are 

 modern. The root of the former ending implies the direction to or to-warda 

 which motion is supposed. It corresponds to, and is probably allied with, the 

 Latin versus. The termination -erly is a corruption or softening of -ernly, 

 easterly for easternly, and many authors of the seventeenth century so write 

 it. In Hakluyt (i., p. 2), easterly is applied to place, "easterly bounds," and 

 means eastern. In a passage in Drayton, "easterly winds" must mean winds 

 from the east ; but the same author, in speaking of nations, uses northerly for 

 northern. Hakewell says : " The sonne cannot goe more souther nely from vs, 

 nor come more northernely towards vs." Holland, in his translation of Pliny, 

 referring to the moon, has: "When shee is northerly," and "shee is gone 

 southerly." Richardson, to whom I am indebted for the above citations, 

 quotes a passage from Dampier where westerly is applied to the wind, but the 

 context does not determine the direction. The only example of the termina- 

 tion in -wardly given by this lexicographer is from Donne, where it means 

 towards the west. 



Shakspeare, in Hamlet (v., ii.), uses northerly wind for ^ind from the north. 

 Milton does not employ either of these terminations, nor were they known to 

 the Anglo-Saxons, who, however, had adjectives of direction in -an or -en, 

 •em and -weard, the last always meaning the point towards which motion ia 

 supposed, the others that/r(?m which it proceeds. 



The vocabulary of science has no specific name for one of the most import 



