110 PHILOSOPHY OF STORMS. 



In closing this report, the committee tender their best 

 thanks to the numerous correspondents who have favored 

 them with regular records of the weather, and also to such 

 as have returned answers to their interrogatories. 



JAMES P. ESPY, for Joint Committee. 



Report of the Committee on Meteorology to the Board of 

 Managers of the Franklin Institute, embodying the facts 

 collated by the Meteorologist relative to the storm of the 

 17th, and ISth March, 1838. 



114. As the great storm immediately preceding the vernal 

 equinox of the present year was one of that class which is 

 supposed to stretch over a wide extent of territory, and to 

 traverse the globe with a determinate direction and velocity, 

 it was believed that an accurate knowledge of its progress 

 and violence at different points would not only prove highly 

 interesting to the cultivators of meteorological knowledge, 

 but would also tend much to the promotion of the object for 

 which the committee was appointed ; with this view the 

 late Joint Committee on Meteorology, of the American Phi- 

 losophical Society of the Franklin Institute, issued two 

 hundred and fifty circulars to different parts of the United 

 States and to Canada, asking for information on the various 

 phenomena exhibited by the storm in the respective vi- 

 cinities. 



That the persons addressed might know the precise ob- 

 jects which the committee had in view, it was stated in the 

 circulars, that the committee regarded it as highly important 

 to ascertain the phases of the great storms of rain and snow 

 which traverse our continent, their shape and size, what^di- 

 rection, and with what velocity their centres move along 

 the surface of the earth, whether they are round, oblong, or 

 irregular, in their shape, whether they move in different 

 directions in the different seasons of the year, &c. &c. 



