[Book Reviews]

Abstract

IN this thick pamphlet of 249 pages, Professor Kingston gives the results of an elaborate, able, and discriminative discussion of the magnetical and meteorological observations made at Toronto during the thirty-one years ending with 1871, in a series of fifty-one tables. To these are appended the daily observations from January 1863 to December 1871. While all the results of the observations, devised and carried out with so much care, and extending over so long a period, are of very great value, we would point to the wind observations as regards the diurnal changes, but particularly in their relations to differences of temperature, pressure, humidity, and cloud, and to light, moderate, and heavy falls of rain and snow respectively, as affording, from the fulness and originality with which they are discussed, much valuable information on many intricate points which it would be difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere. The influence of Lake Ontario is seen in the diurnal changes of the wind, which in July is nearly S. from 10 A.M. to 3 P.M., W. at 5 P.M., nearly N. at midnight, about which it remains till 9 A.M., when it rapidly shifts to S.W., and ultimately to S. at 10 A.M. From October to March, when storms are most frequent, the greatest depression of the barometer and increase of vapour occur with winds from N.E. to S.S.E., and the greatest rise of the barometer and diminution of vapour with winds from W. to N.N.W. On the other hand, in summer the greatest depression of the barometer occurs with winds from E.N.E. to E.S.E., but the greatest increase of vapour with winds from E.S.E. to S.S.W. Most of the light falls of rain occur with winds from N.E. by S. to W., and of snow with winds from S.W. by N. to N.E.; most of the moderate falls of rain with winds from N.E. to S.S.W., and of snow with winds from N.N.W. to S.E.; and most of the heavy falls of rain with winds from N.E. to S.S.E., and of snow from N. to E.S.E. The importa nt bearing of these facts on the question of North American storms as well as on the climate of no inconsiderable portion of that continent is evident. Tables II. and XX. giving by interpolation-formulæ the mean temperatures and mean pressures of different days of the year, while of very slight scientific value, may be found to be useful in a meteorological office, but a simpler and in everyway more preferable table of normal daily values for pressure and temperature could be constructed from the arithmetic means of the thirty-one years' observations treated by Bloxam's method of averages.

Abstracts and Results of Magnetical and Meteorological Observations at the Magnetic Observatory, Toronto, Canada, from 1841 to 1871.

(Toronto, 1875).