9148. WINDS, Systematic observations on.—
I am sorry you have received so
little information on the subject of our winds.
I had once (before our Revolution-war) a
project on the same subject. As I had then an
extensive acquaintance over this State [Virginia],
I meant to have engaged some person in
every county of it, giving them each a thermometer,
to observe that and the winds twice
a day, for one year, to wit, at sunrise and at
four p. m. (the coldest and the warmest point
of the twenty-four hours), and to communicate
their observations to me at the end of the year.
I should then have selected the days in which
it appeared that the winds blew to a centre
within the State, and have made a map of them,
and seen how far they had analogy with the
temperature of the air. I meant this to be
merely a specimen to be communicated to the
Philosophical Society at Philadelphia, in order
to engage them, by means of their correspondents,
to have the same thing done in every
State, and through a series of years. By seizing
the days when the winds centred in any
part of the United States, we might, in time,
have come to some of the causes which determine
the direction of the winds, which I suspect
to be very various. But this long-winded
project was prevented by the war * * *
and since that I have been far otherwise engaged.
I am sure you will have viewed the
subject from much higher ground, and I shall
be glad to learn your views in some of the hours
of delassement, which I hope we are yet to pass
together.—
To Mr. Volney. Washington ed. iv, 159.
(M.
1797)
