92 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



world has ever been interested in and striving for that which is true. Especially 

 is this so in regard to science. Men whose moral character is such as to make 

 them indifferent to many other truths have demanded and earnestly sought for 

 truth in the scientific fields. 



The mere love for truth has sometimes not prompted this so much as the 

 skeptical nature we often see in the purely scientific mind. The wholly scientific 

 mind is skeptical and will not believe that which appears at all doubtful to it, 

 and it is prone to reject that which does not appear reasonable. 



The world contains "many men of many minds," yet all intelligent minds 

 from one source or another are interested in truth. We cannot have truth in 

 scientific matters before we have enlightenment. 



Before we had the weather-map we were as much in the dark as to our at- 

 mospheric conditions as before the days of discovery, before theworld had been 

 circumnavigated and mapped by intelligent men, we were in the dark as to the 

 geography of the earth. Now we have the daily atmospheric conditions revealed 

 to us — there is no longer any excuse for ignorance in this line. There is no 

 longer any excuse for entertaining and upholding that which is false. That which 

 is true has been presented to us — it brings us face to face with Nature and re- 

 veals the great face of Nature to us as never before. Its glory, beauty and power 

 are revealed to us, and in it we see Wisdom, Power and Harmony. 



METEOROLOGICAL INFERENCES FROM TREE-GROWTHS. 



BY ROBT. E. C. STEARNS, PH. D. 



Any one who has taken the trouble to examine the annual growths, or width 

 of the annual rings in trees, has at once perceived a great difference in their thick- 

 ness in the same tree. If we may assume (leaving out young trees) that this 

 variation is principally due to the amount or quantity of the rainfall, and that 

 rings which exhibit maximum thickness have followed in their growth seasons of 

 maximum rainfall, and the thmner rings are consequently the result of the influ- 

 ence of seasons of a less or minimum rainfall, we may also assume that if, on a 

 given date, numerous trees were felled so that we could have transverse sections 

 of all of the principal species, such trees being located at various points in the 

 State and great care being taken that the trees so selected should have been sub- 

 ject, as nearly as possible, to the same environmental conditions, we might ob- 

 tain an aggregation of data of sufficient volume to render a deduction therefrom 

 of great value, as to the meteorology of the Pacific Coast. We might find so 

 close a parallehsm between rings of maximum thickness and seasons of maximum 

 rainfall, that we should be justified in regarding this parallelism as something more 

 than a series of coincidences merely, by finding these coincidences so persistent 

 as to prove a correlation ; and we could, perhaps, base our weather prognostica- 

 tions upon something more than a guess, and learn whether or not there is a 

 periodicity or cyclical terms of wet and dry years. ii< ;i< ^ * 



