PROXIMATE CAUSES OF WINDS ANI) STORMS. 
459 
insects may very easily walk in, but are totally unable to return, in 
consequence of the points of the hairs meeting them. It sometimes 
happens that several enter into one flower, where, their confinement 
becoming irksome, they keep constantly moving about, and thus stimu¬ 
lating the filaments, the anthers deposit the pollen upon the stigma. 
But after impregnation is performed, the hair shrinks, becomes flaccid, 
hangs down close by the sides of the flower, and the little prisoners 
then leave their cage. The insect that frequents this plant is a species 
of gnat (Cecidomia), although a writer in the Annual Medical Review 
doubted the accuracy of the fact; but it has since been proved, by 
ocular demonstration, the flowers inclosing the very insects having 
been sent several miles. 
ARTICLE X. 
ON THE PROXIMATE CAUSES OF WINDS AND STORMS. 
by professor MITCHELL,— Continued from page 414. 
III. TJ iere is in all latitudes (a few tracts of limited extent where 
localfcauses have a decided effect excepted) a predominance of winds 
blowing from the poles towards the equator, over those moving in the 
opposite direction, but this predominance is not so well marked and 
decided as that of the westerly over the easterly winds between the 
latitudes of 30 and 60 degrees. Daniel! states, that in Great Britain, 
upon an average of ten years, “the northerly winds are to the south¬ 
erly as 192 to 173,” and that “in the central parts of Europe the 
northern winds are much more regular; and that there, especially in 
summer, the Etesian breeze constantly prevails.” Cotte’s tables do 
not indicate the predominance and permanence of northerly winds in 
that quarter of the world, which is asserted by Daniell. Of the capital 
cities heretofore mentioned, Aleppo, Bassora, Berne, Petersburg^ and 
Stockholme, appear to have an excess of northerly winds, Amster¬ 
dam, Berlin, and Copenhagen, of southerly; while at Bagdad and 
Paris, the excess on either side is inconsiderable. These tables were 
however, published in 1788, after the work to which they are at¬ 
tached had been in press for some years. The information they afford 
respecting Germany is very meagre, whilst the subject of meteorology 
appears to have excited an extraordinary degree of interest in that 
country between the years 1781 and 1792, so that Daniell may have 
had access to documents by which his assertions were fully warranted. 
It is stated in the Encyclopaedia Perthensis, that at St. Pctersburgh 
the northerly winds were found, during a term of 16 years, to be to 
