PROCEEDINGS OP THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 5G3 



and the fall of the barometer is sudden, the time when a storm would rage 

 on lake Erie could be predicted with great certainty. Often have I seen 

 this done, and so accurate were the calciilations that word could be sent 

 across the lake to persons on the other side not to cross; and twenty-four 

 hours after perhaps, a vessel would be blown ashore so violent would be 

 the gale. I could there predict, with the utmost ease, when a great storm 

 was approaching. In this latitude this cannot be done so well, as the 

 counteracting influences are great. We have the Alleghany mountains in 

 Pennsylvania, which lie about eighty miles in a straight line from us, and 

 •we have the Highlands in this State, which are some 20 or 30 miles from 

 the ocean These mountains are covered with forests which are 600 feet 

 above the level of the sea ; the highest of them are hardly 1,000 feet high. 

 So great an effect have these mountains on an atmosphere loaded with 

 moisture, that in the region beginning on the Delaware river and extend- 

 ing through to the Connecticut river on the north of the Highlands, the 

 climate is the most equable of any on this continent. And from the time 

 of the Dutch settlers to the present, the promise of the Scriptures has never 

 failed. There has always been a "seed time and a harvest;" there has 

 never been a time when the crops could not be raised. In Western New 

 York, at times there have been great droughts — and in 1855 the crops 

 failed; there was no rain south of Milwaukee — and at Cairo, from the first 

 of April to the iollowing October, no rain fell, not enough to moisten the 

 ground. The whole country, from the head of the Wabash river to the 

 Kaskaskia, has been subject to droughts at intervals of five years, and yet 

 this region of country is only some two days' journey by rail from here. 

 These droughts materially interfere with the settlement of this portion of 

 the country, and I suppose that the western part of Kansas cannot be 

 peopled but by nomadic tribes. 



" Illuminating gas and its uses," was selected as the subject for the next 

 discussion. 



Adjourned. 



American Institute' Polytechnic Association, ) 

 January list, 1864. ) 



Chairman, S. D. Tillman, Esq.; Secretary, Mr. B. Garvey. 



Mr. Abbott exhibited a small model of his heater and ventilator, by 

 which the carbonic acid gas, or foul air of a room, heavier than the com- 

 mon air, usually falling to the floor, is made to ascend up the chimney. 

 This is effected by forcing the foul air through a furnace, where it becomes 

 rarefied. The moisture of the warm air for heating is regulated by pass- 

 ing it over wet canvas; the surface of this canvas is increas(;d or di- 

 minished, according to the dryness of the air, by a hygrometric balance, 

 which causes this canvas to rise or sink in a trough of water, thus ex- 

 posing a large or small wet surface to the warm air. 



The Chairman — In England fireplaces are very extensively used as a 

 means of ventilation, but it is a very expensive practice, as nearly nine- 

 tenths of the heat goes up the chimney. The process here described of 

 heating the foul air, in order to make it ascend the chimney, is an im- 



