A NEW VIEW OF THE WEATHER QUESTION. 28] 



travel directly across the land, start in at the Pacific shore and travel regularly — 

 depending on the force of the heat and neutralizing influences — with more or 

 less rapidity toward the Atlantic coast. But the coast range, backed by the high 

 plateau country as far West as to include the Rocky Mountains, makes quite a 

 different condition of climate for this territory from what it would be if it were com- 

 paratively level. To illustrate, say low is developed on the land ; it is checked 

 in its course eastward by the coldness of the mountain airs and is, as it were, 

 shut off from the East. So, in a similar manner, the low that is developed in 

 what may be termed the mountain quadrilateral, but with the territory to the 

 East of the Rocky Mountain range it is altogether different. Here low has a 

 broad and comparatively uninterrupted field through which it travels as it wills, 

 or as the Sun will dictate, sometimes starting here and sometimes there. (See 

 plate.) 



LVII. The higher the Sun works up, generally, the higher the line of low, 

 and the reverse ; and the more concentrated and positive the low will be in these 

 upper or lower latitudes. (Reference is now had to North latitude.) So we see 

 that the North winds prevail in the winter and the South winds in the summer. 

 This a general law and not a special one, that necessarily follows the Sun in its 

 course North and South of the Equator. We do, however, have centers of low 

 running quite high during the winter, and this causes South winds and warm 

 weather; when the reverse and low is low, we have severe cold winters. Because 

 in the United States or in any parallel of latitude they have a warm winter or cool 

 summer, it does not imply that the weather to the North of this line will be cor-, 

 respondingly affected ; it may or may not ; may be correspondingly colder or 

 warmer, all depending on the line of lows in these regions, which may be quite 

 independent of those to the South of them. 



LVIII. As to cold winters and warm winters, it seems a matter of mere 

 accident, so far as we know, yet of course beyond us there may be a Providence 

 in the matter that has special reasons for such a condition of things, but so far 

 as our knowledge reaches it appears to be the merest accident, as the location of 

 low itself. Low starts at a certain point ; it must continually seek new fields ; 

 and it is a wise law that it should, even though it may sometimes come around 

 to locations that cause weather that to us appears out of season. This being the 

 case, it seems very plausible to me that it must be irregular in its time and place, 

 and that it is liable to be constantly overlapping itself, so that after a number of 

 years it gets around to certain localities, causing atmospheric conditions that 

 would not seem natural for a given locality, being cold when our months should 

 say warm, and warm when they should say cold. But nature is nature, and it 

 seems in accordance with herself to have her continually, as it were, overtaking 

 herself. She is all the while obeying the strongest force, either positively or 

 negatively. If our seasons in the course of periods change so as not to accord 

 with the present names of the months, it will be in accordance with this principle 

 — and it may account for many changes in the past history of our Earth that 

 cannot otherwise be accounted for. The greater or less amount of water present 



