ing on steamboats and railroads
running _toward_ or _from_, and in several instances _through_ a storm,
and telegraphic notices and other investigations prove it. The point from
which the surface atmosphere is attracted and blows, depends very much
upon the position of the storm in relation to bodies of water and the
point of observation, and its shape; and the force with which it may blow
will depend much upon its intensity.

Let us take an instance or two by way of illustration of all these points;
and as I have given instances of summer in the introduction, we will take
those of winter. It is January of an "old fashioned winter;" the snow is
about three feet deep in Canada, about one foot in Southern New York, and
a few inches in Philadelphia, and so extends west to the Alleghanies at
least. For several days the sky has been clear, the thermometer rising in
the day-time, in the vicinity of New York to about 25 deg. Fahrenheit, falling
at night to about 6 deg., with light airs from the N. W. during the middle and
latter part of the day; the counter-trade and the barometer both running
high; cold but pleasant, steady, winter weather. There is a warm
south-east rain and thaw coming, as one or more such almost invariably
occur in January. How coming? The sun is far south, and shines aslant, but
through a pure and windless atmosphere; he has tried for several days to
melt the snow from the roof; a few icicles are pendant from the eaves;
but the body of the snow is still there. How can a thaw come? not from the
sun, surely. No, indeed, not from the action of the sun directly, upon our
country, nor from the Atlantic or the Gulf Stream which is off our coast.
But a portion of the current of counter-trade is coming, heated by his
rays and the warm water in the South Atlantic, in an intense
magneto-electric state, capable of inducing an electro-thermal change in
the surface atmosphere which it approaches, and of being reciprocally
acted upon by the north polar terrestrial magnetism. It is now over
Northern Texas and Western Louisiana, it will be here day after tomorrow.
The day passes as the day previous had passed; the sleigh-bells jingle
merrily in the evening; the moon shines clear all night; the storm is
coming steadily on, but its influence has not reached us, and the morning
and midday are like those which preceded it. As nightfall approaches,
however, the thermometer does not fall as rapidly as on the day previous;
the s