PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL 

 GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY 



Popular Meetingfs. 



February i, igoi . — President Graham 

 Bell in the chair. Senor Dr. Don Juan 

 N. Navarro, Mexican Consul General in 

 New York city, delivered an illustrated 

 address, " Mexico of Today." 



Febriiaiy 75, igoT. — Vice-President 

 W J McGee in the chair. Mr. Oscar T. 

 Crosby delivered an illustrated address, 

 " Explorations in Abj^ssinia in igoo." 



Technical Meetings. 



fanuary 2§, igoi. — President Graham 

 Bell in the chair. Prof. Alfred J. Henry, 

 of the United States Weather Bureau, 

 read a paper on the anomalous distribu- 

 tion of rainfall in the Gulf and South 

 Atlantic States during the eleven years 

 1889-1899. Ordinarily, Professor Henry 

 said, years of fat and lean rainfall follow 

 each other in a very irregular procession. 

 A .single dry 3'ear may be followed by a 

 second and even a third, but rarely by 

 a fourth. Wet 3^ears likewise may occur 

 in groups, but the number of years in a 

 group seldom exceed three. 



In the case to which attention was 

 particular!}^ called eleven consecutive 

 dry years were experienced. The an- 

 nual deficiency at the several stations 

 varied largely. In some 3'ears it was 

 not more than 10 per cent of the mean 

 annual fall; in others it was as much as 

 50 per cent. Happily the mean annual 

 fall in the region referred to is so great 

 that an annual deficit of 50 per cent does 

 not create serious alarm. 



Dr. H. C. Frankenfield inquired 

 whether the deficiency in large cities 

 was due to general causes or to steadily 

 growing artificial conditions, such as the 

 increased use of electrical appliances ? 

 Professor Henry replied that the defi- 



ciency was common to both cities and 

 small towns and even to exposed points 

 on the sea coast. It was probably due 

 in part to a shifting in latitude of the 

 paths of storms and to a diminution in 

 the number of tropical disturbances aris- 

 ing in the Gulf of Mexico or advancing 

 toward the southern coast of the United 

 States from the Caribbean. 



Prof. Willis L. Moore called attention 

 to the ver}^ great paucity of meteorolog- 

 ical records and the exceedingly short 

 time that .such records had been con- 

 tiiuied. We should have, he said, at 

 least a hundred years' observations be- 

 fore we could hope to account for such 

 marked variations as had been described. 



Mr. N. H. Darton read a paper enti- 

 tled "The Powder River Range in East- 

 ern Wyoming. ' ' The title of Mr. A. C. 

 Spencer's paper was "A High Plateau 

 in the Copper River Region of Alaska," 

 an interesting description of certain 

 physiographic features of that section of 

 x^laska. In ' ' The Distribution of Trees 

 and Shrubs in Alaska," by F. V. Coville, 

 the speaker traced the zones of plant life 

 in Alaska and gave several possible ex- 

 planations of the strange absence of 

 vegetation on the Aleutian Islands. 



Febniaty 8 , igoi. — President Graham 

 Bell in the chair. Prof. Frank H. Bige- 

 low read a paper entitled ' ' The Plateau 

 BaroDietry of the United States, ' ' the first 

 public announcement of an important 

 work that the Weather Bureau has been 

 prosecuting during the last two years. 



The reduction of barometric read- 

 ings of pressure, taken at the stations 

 on the Rocky Mountain Plateau to the 

 sea-level, has been a problem of special 

 importance to the Weather Bureau, on 

 account of their employment in form- 

 ing daily weather charts. It is also one 



