42 ALLISON ON METEOROLOGY. 



sity for a multiplicity of forces when one is sufficient for the pur- 

 pose. We enter a machine shop, and amid the buzz of wheels and 

 bands we see an engine in a corner running not only the small 

 wheels, but turning the large fly-wheel as well ; or we look on our 

 harbour and see the same power moving not only the pleasure steam- 

 yacht but the ponderous iron-clad as well. If then such is the 

 manner in which man accomplishes his objects, if it is his endeavor 

 in every force he controls to make it work not only small things but 

 great, how much more should it be nature's mode to work in a 

 similar way, for all man's highest efforts are but to imitate or to 

 copy her, and it is not possible that the original should be less per- 

 fect than the copy. 



Spontaneous Generation, therefore, or the cause of it, is only 

 one quoin stone in the arch which girdles the universe, without 

 which nature herself would be incomplete, and in a state of chaos. 



Art. IV. — Halifax Meteorology 1874. By Frederick 

 Allison, M. A., Chief Meteorological Agent. 



{Read May 10, 1875.) 



I have confined myself this evening to brief remarks upon my 

 meteorological observations at this station the past year; as, 

 although statistics are now rapidly accumulating, it is well to 

 defer extended deductions from comparisons of observed facts until 

 a still larger mass of figures and notes be obtained, so as to ensure 

 more accuracy in normals and limits, to work from in the future 

 time. 



Summarizing 1874 then, we find a cool moist year, varying in 

 these principal characteristics very slightly from its two immediate 

 predecessors. The actual tabulated results were as follows : — 

 Mean temperature 42°25 — or .61 below the mean temperature 

 of 12 consecutive years from 1863 inclusive. The maximum was 

 86°, 93°1, beins; the highest I have ever recorded here — that was 



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in August 1872. The minimum was 15°8 — the lowest degree I 



