436 THE MOUNTAIN. 



Meteorologists have discovered that there are regular and 

 irregular winds, regular and irregular rains, regular and 

 irregular storms and electrical phenomena. Of this cate- 

 gory of movements the regular winds, rains, and storms, 

 with accompanying electrical manifestations, are those most 

 generally found in activity. In other words, there is a sys- 

 tem in the action of all these meteoric elements, the con- 

 stant operation of which produces a series of constant results. 

 These have been made the subject of scientific observation 

 for some time by different meteorologists. The great causal 

 forces at work, of all atmospheric movements, are differently 

 designated and explained by different theorists and observ- 

 ers, but the general results, the catalogue of visible outward 

 facts, are accredited and acknowledged by all. 



Thus the details and facts of the trails of the storms which 

 have integrated themselves as great individual meteors, wor- 

 thy of separate histories, and which have been followed for 

 thousands of miles and traced out as minutely as the move- 

 ments of armies of men, and their operations as critically 

 analyzed, are generally admitted by all ; and thus the regis- 

 tration of visible phenomena is nearly identical, as given by 

 Kamtz, Dove, Espy, Loomis, Redfield, Reid, Butler, and 

 Blodget. What the primum mobile may be, whether caloric 

 or electricity, whether those same gyratory aspirations, or 

 heat respirations, whether magnetic stratifications and trans- 

 fusions with positive attractions and negative repulsions, the 

 disputants each arranges the facts, and marshals them under 

 the order and drill of the polarity of his theory. In the 

 mean time, the great facts that are obvious to all of the 

 movements of air-currents, clouds, and electrical manifesta- 

 tions, which occur within the distance of a few miles of the 

 surface of the earth, have been ascertained and recorded, 

 and now stand the material and rudiments of what will soon 

 be a beautiful, wonderful, and, it is to be hoped, an abso- 

 lutely positive science. 



Of the movements of the atmosphere in the mountain 

 ranges of Pennsylvania, the general laws of the climatology 



