xviii WINDS OF THE GLOBE. 



aries residing tliero,.an(l forwarded to me in manuscript. Officers of the British 

 Hudson's Bay Company were so kind as to copy for me in manuscript the entire 

 series of observations on winds at several of their posts in the remote parts of 

 British America — at one of them for a period of seven years. To secure obser- 

 vations at sea 1 was aided by the hitc Gerard Hallock, Esq., one of the editors of 

 the Journal of Commerce, in making arrangements with ship-owners in New 

 York, for the loan of tlie logs of their different vessels. I had not, however, pro- 

 ceeded far in this latter line of research, when Lieut. Maury commenced his labors 

 in the same direction at the National Observatory; and his facilities for procuring 

 material were so superior to mine that I relinquished the field to him, and relied 

 on his published charts for the data I needed at sea, except in the latitudes above 

 G0°, beyond which liis charts did not extend. 



" It was not till three years after the date of my appointment by the Association 

 that I was prepared to report, which was at the first meeting of the American 

 Association for the Advancement of Science, at Philadelphia, in 1848 ; the body 

 which appointed me having in the mean time changed its organization and name 

 to that just given. Ihe report, derived from a period of over 2000 years of 

 observation at 550 stations, contained the announcement 'that between north 

 latitude 33|° and 60° there is a general current from a little to the south of west, 

 extending entirely around the globe ; but that, as those limits are approached, it 

 gradually loses its decided character, and at the limit, on either side, all trace of any 

 fixed direction disappears, the current at»any place being controlled entirely by local 

 influences, as illustrated in the winds of Augusta, Georgia. After passing the limit 

 on the south, a current from the opposite direction sets in, which, as we go south, 

 gradually assumes a more decided character, till we come fully within the limits of 

 tlie trade-winds. North of latitude 60° there are indications that a uniform current 

 that comes down from the north, in the polar regions, veers towards the west, thus 

 establishing a third system, which breaks up at about latitude 60°.' It was 

 while preparing this report, and by applying the improved method of investigation 

 to the winds in the high northern latitudes, that the interesting discovery was 

 thus made of the system of the polar winds, entirely distinct from those which 

 prevail south of it, the physical causes of which have since been so admirably 

 demonstrated by Prof. Ferrel, and which is now beginning to be generally recog- 

 nized as a valuable contribution to meteorology. 



" I may here remark that when first announced all the evidence I had of the 

 existence of tlie polar system of winds was derived from observations made in the 

 northeastern portions of the American continent, Greenland, Northern Iceland, 

 Northern Spitzbergen, and the seas adjacent; the limit attaining so high a latitude 

 on the eastern continent that only the extreme north of Europe and Northern 

 Siberia fell within it, and I was not able to procure reliable data from these inhos- 

 pitable regions. I have, however, since obtained an abstract of the observations 

 of Lieut. Anscliu, for nearly two years, made on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, 

 in Siberia, and valuable material from several places in Northern Finland, South- 

 ern Spitzbergen; from Kane, Hayes [and Hall], in the Greenland Seas; and also 

 from the vicinity of Behring Strait on both sides, contributed by parties employed 



