26 REPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 
The latter half of the volume is occupied with materials for the 
critical study of three storms in 1859, one of which occurred in March 
and the other two in September, collected from the records of the In- 
stitution, and prepared for publication by Professor J. H. Coffin, of 
Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania. One of the important ob- 
jects aimed at in establishing the meteorological observations of the 
Smithsonian Institution was the collection of data for the critical ex- 
amination of the development and progress of the extended commo- 
tions of the atmosphere which occur during the autumn, winter, and 
spring, over the middle or temperate portions of North America. It 
is well known that two hypotheses as to the direction and progress 
of the wind in these storms have been advocated with an exhibition 
of feeling unusual in the discussion of a problem of a purely scien- 
tific character, and which, with sufficient available data, is readily 
susceptible of a definite solution. According to one hypothesis the 
motion of the air in these storms is gyratory; according to the other it 
is in right lines toward a central point, or toward an irregular elon- 
gated middle space. It is hoped that the data here given will be 
considered of importance in settling, at least approximately, these 
questions as to the general pheromena of American storms. 
These two quarto volumes of meteorological results for the six 
years 1854 to 1859 inclusive, embracing nearly two thousand pages, 
together with a volume covering very nearly the same period of time 
published by the War Department, probably form an unsurpassed 
body of materials for the investigation of meteorological phenomena 
over so wide an extent of country. The tables of the War Depart- 
ment embrace nearly two hundred quarto pages of reductions for five 
years, 1855 to 1859, inclusive, and form an appendix to the ‘‘statis- 
tical report on the sickness and mortality in the army of the United 
States,’’? published in 1860, compiled by Assistant Surgeon R. H. 
Coolidge, under the direction of Dr. Lawson, Surgeon General United 
States army. The original records, both in the Smithsonian Institu- 
tion and War Department, from which the results contained in these 
three volumes were deduced, are open to the examination of persons 
who wish to make investigations more minute, or of a more extended 
nature than can be embraced in general tables. 
It is regretted that we have not the means at present of continuing 
the reduction of all the records as received from the observers, and 
of publishing the results. This want, however, is supplied to a 
limited extent by the publication of the reductions of temperature and 
