454 PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



1859 inclusive, were placed in his hands for reduction and dis- 

 cussion. This work was conscientiously and thoroughly per- 

 formed, and the results published in a quarto volume of up- 

 ward of twelve hundred pages. In conducting this work, Prof. 

 Coffin engaged the services of some of the students of Lafay- 

 ette College, and a large number of women. The wages of 

 these computers were paid by an appropriation from Congress, 

 while the services of Prof. Coffin himself, in directing and su- 

 perintending the whole, were entirely gratuitous." 



His treatise on The Winds of the Northern Hemisphere, 

 issued in the Transactions of the Smithsonian Institution, vol. 

 vi, in 1853, was his most important publication, and the one 

 which made him known wherever science is cultivated. This 

 work had been commenced at least ten years before the date 

 of its publication, a communication having been made in rela- 

 tion to it to the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science, in 1848. 



The materials on which it was based were derived from all 

 accessible sources, including six hundred different stations on 

 land, and numerous positions at sea, extending from the equa- 

 tor to the 83d degree of north latitude, the most northerly 

 point then reached by man, and embracing an aggregate period 

 of over twenty-eigh't hundred years. 



The design of the work was to ascertain, as far as possible, 

 the mean direction in which the lower stratum of the air moves 

 in different portions of the Northern Hemisphere, its rate of 

 progress, the modification it undergoes in different months of 

 the year, the amount of deflecting forces, and its relative ve- 

 locity from different points of the compass. The collection of 

 this material involved an amount of correspondence and biblio- 

 graphical research which but few would undertake, even with 

 the hope of pecuniary reward, and still fewer for the love of 

 truth, and the acquisition of knowledge for its own sake. But 

 the labour of computation, and discussion of the materials, was 

 an almost Herculean task, to which years of silent and unob- 

 trusive labour were devoted. The work consisted mainly of 

 about one hundred and forty quarto page tables of figures, with 

 descriptive deductions, and illustrated by maps. Each of these 

 figures is the result of laborious calculations, since the method 

 of determining the velocity and direction of the wind is the 

 same as that employed by the mariner in determining the dis- 



