must have failed to equal the endurance of the latter. Her mind is neither so quick nor so penetrating as that of Penelope, and she would have been able neither to understand how she ought to act, nor to devise means of eluding the necessities which would almost compel her to an unwise course. Her love has not that strength of reason to give it endurance which is found in the wife of Ulysses, but is rather simple, unguided impulse. Penelope was able to cope with the troubles of her position alone. Andromache has continual need of some one on whom she can lean for support, and to whom she can confide all her secret purposes. She has nothing in herself to sustain her, and when deprived of one prop, after a short and vain attempt to stand alone, she must find another or perish.

We have thus briefly considered the character of each individual of that group of female personages which the poems of Homer place before us, and we cannot but admire the skill with which the poet has sketched them. Occurring, as they do for the most part, incidentally and in the episodes of his work, he has yet preserved an exact consistency in his delineation, and drawn each in perfect conformity with nature, and yet entirely different from all the others. On a survey of their several portraits, we cannot but feel that, whether they are historical persons, or mere creations of a poet's fancy, to us, at least, they have a real existence.

ART. II. Climatology of the United States, and of the Temperate Latitudes of the North American Continent. Embracing a full Comparison of these with the Climatology of the Temperate Latitudes of Europe and Asia. And especially in regard to Agriculture, Sanitary Investigations, and Engineering. With Isothermal and Rain Charts for each Season, the Extreme Months, and the Year. Including a Summary of the Statistics of Meteorological Observations in the United States, condensed from recent Scientific and Official Publications. By LORIN BLODGET, Author of several recent Reports on American Climatology, Member of the National Institute, and of various Learned Societies. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1857. 8vo. pp.

536.

CLIMATOLOGY is a recent science, and by some is held to have not yet attained the certainty of a science. While climate and its varieties are as old as the world, and while temperature is its grand element, and has long been known to be such, its modifying powers and the laws of their action were too obscure to be ascertained by any means and instruments in use till within the century past. What appliances had the Greeks or Romans, the Persians or Assyrians, or even the Egyptians, much less the nations of Europe, in the Middle Age of our era, to ascertain the force and laws of these modifying influences? Connected, indeed, as climatic phenomena are, with the universal interests of men, philosophic minds, like those of Aristotle and Theophrastus, Aratus and Virgil, before the Christian era, and Pliny and others soon after its commencement, could not but think and write concerning

Shortly after the publication of Blodget's Climatology, a contributor, deservedly eminent for his attainments and services in natural science, prepared a thorough review of it. The greater part of this review was lost by an accident on the New York Central Railroad, in which sundry mail-bags were thrown into water, and their contents damaged beyond restoration. A few of the last sheets, sent by a subsequent mail, alone reached us; and as they admitted of being printed as an independent article on several of the topics discussed in the book, we published them in our number for October, 1858. Since that time our friend has rewritten from memory the lost portion of his article, which we here present to our readers.

them. But their speculations on the subject had no value. The instruments for investigation were wanting. These are chiefly four, the Thermometer, the Barometer, the Raingauge, and the Hygrometer,- all of which were invented since about the middle of the seventeenth century, and have been greatly improved in later years. The mercurial thermometer of Fahrenheit was not graduated by him till 1721, and the report of its graduation was first published in the Philosophical Transactions of 1724. Nearly a century passed from the invention of the thermometer, before any valuable observations were made by means of it. Indeed, we must pass to the latter part of the eighteenth century for these, and, for the most extensive and valuable, to the first half of the nineteenth. But the thermometer has proved to be to climatology what the sun is to climate itself, the all-important element. It has yielded to investigators the very facts which lie at the foundation of the science.

Chemistry, a recent science, was also needed to ascertain the laws of caloric, as free, or specific, or combined, before this instrument could be adequate to its work. This, too, has been effected only in the century preceding the present day. The fluctuations in temperature and the variations in climate thus began to appear as governed by regular laws. It was seen, also, that definite conclusions on climate could be attained from the average of long and extended series of regular observations in all the countries where science and civilization cooperated. A series of observations by means of the thermometer, or by any, or all, of the above-named instruments, from which no average is deduced, is, like the weather or climate itself, simply a series of facts in consecutive order. It took a century for observers to learn the indispensable necessity of regular observations, at the same hours, and with similar accurate attention, through all the seasons of the year. Then the averages could be obtained for comparison, and the great facts learned of the general uniformity of climate in any given locality. Hence Blodget writes: "The measures of heat, moisture, rain, and atmospheric weight, are all to be treated alike in this respect; the averages afford fixed quantities, which must first be defined, and from these the distance to which extremes go." (p. 17.)

We will now look at the testimony of history on the state of climatology only forty years ago. Howard, in his "Climatology of London," published in 1818, shows the science to be in its purely infantile state, and announces, that, with all the accumulation of observations at that time, he "may probably venture to anticipate some of the conclusions which must ultimately be derived." He gave a classification of the clouds, under seven different names for that number of distinct forms or modifications, which, though considered "fanciful" by his contemporaries, constitute with slight changes the present nomenclature of those splendid, changing, and wonderful aggregations of visible vapor, or of very "minute drops of water" floating in the atmosphere. The forms were considered as presenting very certain indications of weather at hand. The "Cirrus" clouds, when alone, rarely, if ever, yield rain; the "Cumulus" never appear but in fair weather; the "Stratus," or fog rising from the earth over the valleys and streams, indicates a pleasant day; the "Nimbus," composed of dense rolled-up masses or thunder-heads below, over-topped by the expanded cirrus, surely forebodes the shower in which lightnings often play the principal part; the "Cirro-cumulus," in moderate collections, or spread out in small masses and at different elevations, must be changed or disappear in invisible vapor before the fair weather passes away. The two others, generally appearing in storms, the "Cirro-stratus " especially being the usual precursor of continued rain or storm,

may sometimes cover the sky, attended with more or less wind, but not with either rain or snow. Another instrument, the barometer, is wanted to make the indications probable.

In an article on Meteorology, written near forty years ago, in England, it is stated that no fixed hours of observing the temperature had been adopted; that no hours had been ascertained whose mean would give the approximate mean of the day; that there was no system of careful observation at any hours; that most of the meteorological observations had little practical importance; and that the maximum and minimum of the thermometer were employed by some in the belief that the mean of the extremes must approximate closely to the

mean temperature of the day, especially as it coincided nearly with the mean of the observations at 10 A. M. and 10 P. M. The same writer maintained the necessity of daily observations at every hour in the day, through the year, of the sum of which hourly results the twenty-fourth part would be a near approximation to the mean temperature of each day, while from similar calculations the average temperature of each month and of the year would be attained. Yet he declares "this method, for obvious reasons, impracticable"; in other words, no one would then undertake the great labor of twentyfour daily observations for many consecutive weeks.

Yet in 1816 and 1817 this work had been begun in our country, and, from a sense of the necessity of twenty-four observations daily, had been successfully performed for many days in the different seasons of the year. The observations and the results were published, and the third part of the sum of the temperatures taken at the convenient hours of 7 A. M. and 2 and 9 P. M. was shown to be a near approximation to the mean of the twenty-four hourly observations.*

In 1817 Baron Humboldt published his essay on the Distribution of Heat, illustrated by a map of Isothermal Lines, exhibiting the isothermal positions of numerous places in Europe, and then extended across the Atlantic into North America. This essay was made known to the West of Europe by the translation of it in Brewster's Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1819-20, accompanied by important remarks.

In 1820 the government of the United States had just commenced, under the auspices of Mr. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, its noble system of meteorological observations at all the military posts in the country. The execution of the work was committed to the Medical Department of the army, under the direction of the Surgeon-General. Great praise is due to this department for the successful co-operation of the surgeons at the several posts. The hours of observation were fixed at

* In 1825 or 1826, similar hourly observations were made at Leith, Scotland, through the year; in 1839, at Amherst College, by Prof. Snell; in 1843-5, for three years, at Toronto, C. W., published by her Majesty's government in 1853 and 1857, under direction of Col. Sabine; and in 1840-45, the Girard Observations at Philadelphia, under the direction of A. D. Bache, LL.D., published in 1847.