374 ALLISON ON CANADIAN WEATHER TELEGRAPHY* 



either Washington or Toronto, but simply because those observers 

 are not so favourably placed for this district of observations. But 

 the more obvious hindrances to continued accuracy in this branch, 

 are not all nor even the most grave of those at present encountered. 



To give correct opinions as to ensuing weather, it is an essential 

 requisite that not only the temporary conditions of any atmospheric 

 area during the disturbance under consideration be known, but 

 that the normal temperatures and wind directions, the permanent 

 hills and hollows of pressure, and even the geographical configura- 

 tion, may have been the subjects of long study and intimate 

 acquaintance. In this respect the local observer has an immense 

 advantage. For myself it is nearly twenty-six years since I first 

 gave attention to meteorology. This period has been much broken ; 

 and the observations of my earlier years are frequently inaccurate, 

 from faults in instruments and position. But I now have eleven 

 full years of trustworty records for Halifax ; and during the latest 

 ei^ht of these, the observations have been made in many months at 

 bi-hourly, in some at tri-hourly, or at farthest at four hours inter- 

 vals ; so that, in statistical knowledge, the station may claim to be 

 well equipped. Also there have been sent in to me from efficient 

 observers, scattered through Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, P. E. 

 Island and Newfoundland — besides a few in the Upper Provinces — 

 many years of excellent registers. Thus constantly observing 

 myself, and receiving this copious information, I cannot fail to have 

 gained a stock of facts which lay open at my feet the regular 

 conditions and extreme eccentricities of this climate. By no means 

 disparaging the attainments of others at a distance, the office here 

 must then have peculiar facilities for warning our own Province, 

 merely from its position alone. In spite of the present disadvan- 

 tages above mentioned, the Washington office has been very 

 successful in its anticipations, as I now shall show. 



Without going any farther back, that I may not overburden 

 this paper with bare statistics, I merely take the past month of 

 February ; premising that the proportion of disturbances expected 

 over this Province, held about the same ratio to the facts in the 

 preceding four months since the storm staff has been erected as in 



