SOME PECULIARITIES IN THE RAINFALL OF 
TEXAS. 
BY 
Adolphus Washington Greely. 
[Read before the Society February 13,1892.] 
The popular fallacy obtains that Texas has only one 
climate, whereas, in truth, there is no political division of 
the Union, except California, which presents to the investi¬ 
gator or the settler a greater diversity of climatic character¬ 
istics with reference to temperature, rainfall, wind, cloudi¬ 
ness, and humidity. It is not unusual to hear Texas spoken 
of as an empire in itself—a vague, indefinite term, which is 
applied to the detriment of Texas, whether as regards its 
physical area or its future possibilities with reference to its 
population or resources. As calculated by the United States 
Geological Survey, the total area of Texas is 265,780 square 
miles, or nearly one-eleventh of the area of the United States, 
Alaska excluded. It is larger than Great Britain, Ireland, 
and Italy combined, and considerably exceeds in area 
France, Germany, or Austria-Hungary. It is divided into 
two hundred and twenty-eight counties, of which no less 
than fourteen are larger than the State of Delaware. The 
geographical limits of Texas extend from 25° 50' to 36° 30' 
north latitude, while the extreme eastern and western bound¬ 
aries are in respectively 93° 30' and 106° 40' west longitude. 
Geographical terms in this instance, however, convey very 
indefinite impressions to the general reader, or indeed to the 
ordinary student, since the extensive area of Texas forbids 
its representation in ordinary geographies by maps of the 
9—Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 12. 
(53) 
