88 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



Mr. S. Edwards Todd said he had been familiar with barome- 

 ters, more or less, for the last fifteen years, and had been inti- 

 mately acquainted with several other excellent and intelligent 

 farmers, who had watched their barometers from early dawn till 

 evening, and all of us, without a single exception, have been obliged 

 to acknowledge that barometers arc really of no practical value 

 to common farmers in securing their crops from the coming storms. 

 He said he once met with an old sea-captain, who stated that a 

 good barometer will indicate the approach of a high wind at sea, 

 but ngt a storm, with any degree of certainty. He had seen the 

 names of publishers, where they have appeared more than one 

 million times, appended to statements attesting to the cash value 

 of a single ])arometer to them. He would not impugn the veracity 

 of such men; yet he felt pained to see so many honest and indus- 

 trious farmers bamboozled, hoodwinked and gulled out of their 

 hard earnings by men who profess better things, and who know 

 better than to palm off such worthless instruments, at extortionate 

 prices, on honest men, when they themselves know that such things 

 can be of no practical utility to common farmers. There may be 

 some good barometers; yet, an ounce vial with its neck cut ofl' 

 with a string, and filled with water and suspended from the wall 

 bottom upward, is worth more than all the barometers that can 

 be stored in this room for indicating the approach of a storm. No 

 barometer that I have ever seen would indicate, with any degree of 

 certainty, whether the clouds w^ould pour down torrents, or only a 

 o-entle sprinkle of rain. These things are hard for our friend with 

 barometers. Yet as we are sworn attorneys for the interests of 

 industrious and hard-working farmers, they must come out, with- 

 out fear, favor or compromise. If we can be convinced that barom- 

 eters will enable common farmers to regulate their field operations 

 so as to escape damage from storms, the world shall have the 

 benefit of the experience. 



Mr. Wilder. — One reason why the printed directions so often 

 fail, is that they have very generally been taken from English 

 books, which calculate for a climate entirely difterent from ours. 

 Mr. Robinson has confessed to me that all his ov,-n observations 

 have been with an aneroid barometer, which no scientific authority 

 esteems reliable. I wish he would take a good mercurial barome- 

 ter, observe it six months, and report. 



Mr. Bartlett. — Such observations can be found for dificrent 



