274 Description of a New Compensating Pendulum. 
17th, and Cornus florida on the 24th. An unusual depression of 
temperature on the 4th of March, sinking the mercury to four 
degrees below zero, destroyed nearly all the blossom buds of the 
pear and the peach. Apples, and all the smaller fruits, were 
abundant. 'The severe storms in December, which visited the 
coast in the eastern states, were but slightly felt here. On the 
15th, 22d, and 28th of December, we had falls of snow, accom- 
panied with but little wind, amounting in all to about a foot. 
Thirty miles west of this place the ground has barely been cov- 
ered with snow, to this time, the twentieth of January, while 
BE. a . E. as we approach the mountain ranges, it has fallen 
to a depth unprecedented for many years. ‘The same great 
abundance of snow seems also to have attended the storms in the 
middle and eastern states. 
January 84 
Arr. [X.—Description of a New Compensating Pendulum; by 
Winuiam Gwynn Jones, A. M 
Dourine the latter part of the past year, while engaged in some 
interesting astronomical observations which required considerable 
accuracy, it was indispensable to procure a time-keeper whose rate 
would not be affected by the variations in the temperature of the 
weather, to which all such machines, of ordinary construction, are 
liable. The expensiveness of a chronometer which could be 
relied upon for such a purpose, rendered a resort to some more 
economical instrument desirable, if it could be depended upon. 
The gridiron pendulum as well as the mercurial one, both o 
which have been designed to effect this object, were found unsat- 
isfactory ; the former from the difficulty of procuring an exact 
adjustment of the different rods of which it is composed, so as to 
produce the desired counterbalancing expansion and contraction, 
and the mercurial pendulum proving upon experiment too sensi- 
tive to be relied upon. Under these circumstances, I contrived & 
simple arrangement for a pendulum, acting upon the pr inciple of 
the lever, which performed with so much accuracy that I have 
been induced to present it to the notice of the readers of the 
American Journal, believing it will not prove nninteresting 1 ” 
in scientific investigations requiring great 
