METEOROLOGY. 



METHODISTS. 



570 



tached clouds), and the rainbow, are more or 

 less significant of increasing wind, if not of ap- 

 proaching rain, with or without wind. 



Xear land, in sheltered harbors, in valleys, 

 or over low ground, there is usually a marked 

 diminution of wind, during part of the night, 

 and a dispersion of clouds. At such times, an 

 eye on an overlooking height may see an ex- 

 tended body of vapor below (condensed by the 

 cooling of night), which seems to check the 

 wind. Finally, along with the other indications 

 of change or continuance of the wind or weath- 

 er, the dryness or dampness of the air, and its 

 temperature, are never to be overlooked. 



Cyclones and Anti- Cyclones. The occur- 

 rence of cylones, or rain and wind storms of 

 several hundred miles diameter, which at once 

 advance and rotate or whirl, is now pretty 

 generally received as a fact by theoretical and 

 practical meteorologists. Prof. Dove lays it 

 down as generally true that when the air is in- 

 draughted from all or many sides to a stormy 

 centre of light ascending currents, the result- 

 ing wind at the surface takes a movement in 

 cyclonic curves (retrograde in northern lati- 

 tudes, or in a direction the reverse of that of 

 the hands of a watch, face upward) ; and that 

 such winds are also produced when the equa- 

 torial current forces its w"ay from S.W. against 

 a mass of quiescent air. Mr. S. A. Rowell, be- 

 fore the British Association, 1862, presented 

 what he considered objections to the cyclone 

 theory ; among them, the great unlikelihood of 

 the rotation of an extremely broad and thin 

 disc of air, the greatest thickness not exceeding 

 the one or two miles of height through which 

 only such turning current can be formed, and 

 of the supposition that this revolving disc will 

 also make its way forward through the densest 

 parts of the atmosphere. In truth, however, 

 this is not a question to be settled by likelihood, 

 but rather by actual record and comparison of 

 the places of storms and the directions of winds 

 in different parts of the area they cover, at 

 successive hours and days through their con- 

 tinuance ; and evidence of this sort appears now 

 to be decidedly in favor of the cyclone theory. 

 Mr. Galton, in a paper very recently read 

 before the Royal Society, asserts that the oc- 

 currence of direct rotations of vast discs of air 

 (that is, those turning in the direction opposite 

 of that of the cyclone, namely," in that of the 

 hands of a watch) are also common, being due 

 to an opposite cause, namely, heavy descending 

 currents over a considerable area nearly calm ; 

 and these winds he proposes to name anti-cy- 

 clones. A comparison of simultaneous charts 

 of the weather of Europe, over 93 epochs of 

 observation, compiled and shortly to be pub- 

 lished by him, showed an almost invariable de- 

 flection of the wind currents in the course 

 above mentioned (the same as that required in 

 Dove's law of the rotation of the wind), with 

 occasional instances of strongly marked and 

 complete anti-cyclones. Indeed, an anti-cy- 

 clone can feed a cyclone at any part of the cir- 



cumference of the latter, and without abrupt- 

 ness, just as two wheels by contact at their cir- 

 cumferences turn in opposite directions. The 

 localities of highest and lowest barometer, at 

 the same time, were separated in his charts by 

 distances of from 1,000 to 2,000 miles; and he 

 concludes that whenever there are limited 

 areas of very high and low barometer at dis- 

 tances not exceeding the above, a line drawn 

 from the former to the latter will be cut in all 

 cases by winds coming from the left. He 

 argues that, as the area of the cyclones is one 

 of storm and rain, so that of the anti-cyclones 

 is an area of general calms and fair weather. 



METHODISTS. The Methodists are by far 

 the most numerous religious denomination of 

 the United States, and were divided, in 1862, 

 into the following branches : 1. The Methodist 

 Episcopal Church, with a membership of 942,- 

 906 (which, however, includes the Missionary 

 Conference of Germany and the Liberia Con- 

 ference) ; 2. The Methodist Episcopal Church 

 South, with about 700,000 members. 3. The 

 American "\Vesleyan Methodists, with about 

 2 1,000 members. 4. The Methodist Protestant 

 Church, with about 90,000 members. 5. The 

 African Methodist Episcopal Church, with 

 about 20,000 members. 6. The African Metho- 

 dist Episcopal Zion Church, with about 6,000 

 members. 7. The Evangelical Association, also 

 called German Methodists, with 46,000 mem- 

 bers. 8. The Free Methodist Church (origi- 

 ted in 1859), with a few congregations in New 

 York and other Northern States. 9. The Inde- 

 pendent Methodist Church, the first congre- 

 gation of which was organized in 1860, in New 

 York city. 10. The Central Methodist Epis- 

 copal Church, consisting of three churches in 

 Baltimore, which separated from the Methodist 

 Episcopal Church, on account of the changes 

 made by the last General Conference of the 

 Church in the book of discipline. 



The Methodist Episcopal Church, the most 

 numerous of these denominations, suffered 

 during the year 1862 a decrease of 45,617, the 

 decrease of members being 22,045 and that of 

 probationers 23,573. The largest decrease was 

 shown in the border Conferences, which had 

 been during the year the seat of the war, 

 and part of which had even been under the 

 control of the Confederates. Four of these 

 Conferences, the Missouri and Arkansas, the 

 Baltimore, the East Baltimore, and Western 

 Virginia conferences, showed alone a decrease 

 of 10,161 members. A considerable increase 

 was shown by the following Conferences : 

 Nebraska, North Indiana, East Maine, East 

 Genesee, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. 



Six of the fifty-one Conferences of the 

 Methodist Episcopal Church, viz.: Missouri 

 and Arkansas, Baltimore, East Baltimore, Phila- 

 delphia (embracing the churches of Delaware), 

 Kentucky and "Western Virginia, are wholly or 

 partly in slaveholding States. In one of these 

 Conferences Baltimore a great dissatisfac- 

 tion was manifested with a change made by the 



