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atmosphere, though greater in intensity, is very small in quantity, according to the experiments of Faraday, Pouillet and others.—I would not wish, however, to discourage your experiments. It would give me much pleasure to see you in Washington, and to have a long talk on the subject of atmospheric phenomena," &c.
  In April, 1858, I made my visit to Washington, accordingly, having now got privilege of a personal conversation with a philosopher in whom I had more confidence as to solid truths yet undeveloped, than any man living. I passed over a day with Professor Henry, and after stating to him all I knew about storms and atmospheric phenomena, so far as I understood it, and saw and experienced it, I made the proposition of building a balloon expressly for the electrical experiment, provided the Smithsonian Institution would furnish the gas, wire, rope and other instruments, and direct the experiment; and to this Professor Henry at once agreed. This balloon was built last summer, and we had arranged for the experiment in August or September of 1858; but business pressing upon Professor Henry in bringing out his "Report," and other matters, we deferred the thing for this summer. The balloon is still on hand, and is labelled "Smithsonian.—Pro Scientia et Arte." I made an ascension in that balloon on the 14th ult., and noted some remarkable atmospheric phenomena, which were at once submitted to Professor Henry. In the acknowledgement of my report, Professor Henry says: "I shall probably have a few weeks' vacation this summer, and would be pleased to make some of the experiments with you which we contemplated last summer. Please inform me when it would be most convenient for you to meat me." When I received this cheering news from Professor Henry, of readiness to try this experiment, I was busily engaged in getting things ready for the great trans-continental trip from St. Louis to the Atlantic seaboard in the balloon Atlantic, furnished by Mr. O. H. Gager, of Boston, and with whom I had entered into a contract for the directorship of that enterprise. Since that time I have written to Professor Henry, and am awaiting his orders to proceed to Washington with the balloon Smithsonian, to put the matter under trial. 
  If Mr. Hippolite Charles Vion has already made this thing practically demonstrable, i. e. using it for the purposes designated, then I am too late for the uses of the patent. If, like myself, he only thinks it will subserve these purposes, then I claim priority for my own country. It often happens that two or more persons are pursuing the same investigations without knowing of each other's efforts, and this is certainly the case with me so far as the French experiment is concerned. I have for five years past corresponded with electricians in this country on the subject, and on the resources of atmospheric electricity; but until the time above mentioned, I did not take the necessary active steps to bring it under test. I wanted a person to direct the experiments, and Prof. Henry was the man I preferred above all others to be my guide and director in them. I proposed to him that this electricity could be brought down as a good motor for all mechanical purposes, that it would serve as much better than steam or water power, and at a comparative trifling cost. Irrespective of this, however, an electric-collecting balloon, suspended a mile or two above a city, would be a sure defense against electrical destruction or damage to that city. 
JOHN WISE.
LANCASTER, July 1859.
  [In addition to the above communication on this subject from Mr. Wise, we have received another from C. Kirchoff, of this city, in which he makes similar claims. He made the discovery a long time ago, and says he has tested it in the presence of witnesses. He also states that not only atmospheric, but all electrical currents, of whatever kind and character, may be stored up and afterwards used at pleasure, and be conveyed on a conductor to any distance. He has made many experiments of this character, and has had the apparatus in operation for several days without interruption. With such currents he once kept two telegraphs that he had on exhibition at the N. Y. Crystal Palace (in 1857) in continuous operation for more than an hour. The power which he thus obtained from the free storehouse of nature was equal to a Grove's battery of six cups. From the documents of M. Vion, however, we judge that he has given this subject attention for a number of years, and that he reduced his ideas to practice long ago.—Ens.

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ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE.
From Our Own Reporters. 
THIRD DAY.
SPRINGFIELD, Friday, June 5, 1859.
The Association met this morning at 10 1/2 a. m. The attendance was not so large as yesterday, owing perhaps to the lateness of the hour at which most of the members retired.
Prof. BACHE of the Committee of Arctic Exploration reported that they had cooperated with Dr. Hayes in his efforts to fit out another expedition, which had become more desirable from the discussion of Dr. Kane's observations. The Committee was continued. Adjourned to Monday.
  MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS, AND CHEMISTRY.
  Capt. E. B. HUNT in the chair.
  Prof. HENRY spoke on Meteorology. He commenced by alluding to the meteorological observations which had been made in this country by the Coast Survey, by the States of New-York and Pennsylvania, and especially by the Smithsonian Institution. Prof. Coffin there devoted his entire time, with a corps of assistants, to the reduction of these observations. He noted the labors of others; there were 350 observers scattered over the country, who made observations three times a day. To trace out storms fully i [[it]] was needful that they should be followed into the ocean; but they had not yet been able to establish coöperative relations with those who had the meteorology of the ocean particularly in charge. The force of meteorology was the heat of the sun. This would produce a current from the pole to the equator along the suface [[surface]] of the earth, with an upper returning current, were it not that all the air of the equator could not find room as it flowed toward the pole and was forced to return. For a similar reason there was a similar system within 30 degrees of the pole. Between these was another system, which was ordinarily the reverse of these, but was often reversed. Mr. Espy attempted to show that the heat evolved by the condensation of vapor into rain, almost constant along the Equator, aided in producing these currents. Another cause was the tendency, from the rotation of the earth, of a northward current to be deflected to the eastward, and of a southward current to be deflected to the westward (in the Northern hemisphere). The movement of the air currents still required to be examined by balloon and calculations. At the Equator was a ring of cloud, some 400 or 500 miles wide. To Mr. Espy we owed the appreciation of the fact that an upward current always produced rain. We had this ascending current at the equator, and this was the reason why winds blowing up the sides of the mountains condensed their vapor into rain. It had been supposed that the lower currents of air toward the equator crossed each other as they rose, he could not believe it; the magnetism of the air could produce no motion. Prof. Henry gave a resumé of the ocean currents. He stated that the average wind of the north temperate zone was south-west, about 10,000 feet high it was west, and still higher north-west. He had conferred with Mr. Wise, and he thought that the success of the proposition to cross the ocean in a balloon was by no means improbable. He looked upon the balloon as a very important instrument in meteorology, and the observations of Mr. Wise had been of great value. Besides these, regular currents we had immense disturbances, storms which were peculiar to our country, and we were better situated to study them than the meteorologists of Europe. They were living on the western side of a continent, and the storms which came upon them they could not study before they came. He thought that the upward motion of the air was the most active agency in storms. At their approach the barometer fell, the thermometer and the hydrometer rose. The air at the surface grew sultry, became abnormally heated and saturated with moisture, until at last it forced a path up through the upper, serene, eastward-flowing current. The upward-rushing air reduced the barometer very much immediately under it. A very rapid upward current, producing sudden and intense cold, would form hail, by which the air would be thrown down until the general power of the current tossed it up again. Prof. Wise had assured him that once, when ballooning, he was caught in a thunder-shower, and was taken up three or four times, and thrown out each time, so circulating just like a hail-storm. Prof. Wise was very anxious that he should join him in going into a thunder-shower. Prof. Henry explained tornadoes and water-spouts by still more intense action of this kind. Most of the telegraph companies south of New-England and east of the Mississippi sent to the Smithsonian Institution weather reports every day, and one of the most interesting objects they had to show was a map on which they placed small cards, green over a place where it was snowing, black where it was raining, brown where it was cloudy, and white where it was clear. By this information, he was generally able to foretell the weather 12 hours. He traced the particular wave of very cold weather last January, which spent the 5th in the Saskatchewan Valley and among the saints in Utah, and gradually moved toward the south as far as Venezuela and toward the East, reaching Cape Race on the 13th, where it passed off the continent. He explained other maps, all showing that "spells of weather," hot or cold, came from the north-west, and spread out to the west and south, arriving at Venezuela, the Bermudas and Cape Race in about a week. Prof. Henry exhibited an isothermal map of the United States, the first which had been reduced to the level of the sea. It shows a marked trend to the northward along the elevated regions of the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleras. This is explained principally by the fact that very little heat was there consumed in the evaporation of rain. He also exhibited an agricultural map, based on the amount of rain-fall, showing the wooded, the prairie and the barren regions of the country. He thought that a good deal might be done in the region of Iowa by planting trees in a N. E. and S. W. direction, so that the cold wind should be shut out and the warm S. W. wind be admitted.
  Judge BUTLER abused scientific men, and made an offer of $50 a cloud which originated within 10,000 feet of the earth and rose 1,000 feet above the stratum in which it originated. He was down on the "Halley theory." He asserted that under this very equatorial belt of rains, where the air was so hot, according to the theory which had been advanced, it was much cooler than on either side.
  Prof. HENRY said that he had read Judge Butler's work, and he believed that his views were in confirmation of the theory which he had just illustrated. An immense amount of latent heat was evolved by the deposition of so much rain.
  Judge BUTLER insisted that this latent heat was all humbug; instead of a balloonist being boiled above a thunder-cloud, he was oftener pelted with hail-stones.
  Prof. LOOMIS gave his fiat to the theory advanced by Prof. Henry.

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DAILY COURIER.
LAFAYETTE:
Tuesday Evening, August 9.
Prof. Wise' Theory of Ærial Navigation, Air Currents, &c., Discussed in Scientific Congress.
  At the meeting in Springfield, Mass., on the 5th inst, of the Scientific Congress, Professor Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, spoke on meteorology, and in reference to air currents, he mentions the very same motions of the air, upon which Prof. Wise bases his system of ærial navigation. Prof. Henry says: "Another cause was the tendency, from the rotation of the earth, of a northward current to be deflected to the eastward, and of a southward current to be deflected to the westward, (in the Northern Hemisphere.) The movement of the air currents still required to be examined by balloons and calculations. At the Equator was a ring of cloud, some 400 or 500 miles wide. To Mr. Espy we owed the appreciation of the fact that an upward current always produces rain. We had this ascending current at the equator, and this was the reason why winds blowing up the sides of the mountains condensed their vapor into rain. It has been supposed that the lower currents of air toward the equator crossed each other as they rose. He could not believe it. The magnetism of the air could produce no motion." Prof Henry gave a resume of the ocean currents. He stated that the average wind of the North Temperate Zone was south-west; about 10,000 feet high it was West, and still higher North-West. He had conferred with Mr. Wise, and he thought that the success of his proposition to cross the ocean in a balloon was by no means improbable. He looked upon the balloon as a very important instrument in meteorology, and the observations of Prof. Wise had been of great value. Besides the regular currents, we had immense disturbances, storms which were peculiar to our country, and we were better situated to study them than the meteorologists of Europe. He thought the upward motion of the air was the most active agency in storms. At their approach the barometer fell, the thermometer and hygrometer rose. The air at the surface grew sultry, became abnormally heated and saturated with moisture, until at last it forced a passage through the upper, serene, eastward-flowing current. The upward-rushing air reduced the barometer very much immediately under it. A very rapid upward current produced sudden and intense cold, would form hail, by which the hail would be thrown down, until the general power of the current tossed it up again. Prof. Wise had assured him that once, while ballooning, he was caught in a thunder storm, and was taken up three or four times, and thrown out each time, so circulating just like a hail storm. Prof. Wise was very anxious that he (Prof. Henry) should join him in going into a thunder shower."
  Prof. Wise describes the formation of a rain-cloud thus in one of his narratives:—"The wind below had now supplied the atmosphere with moisture enough to make a rain-cloud. Slowly but interestingly, the vapor assumed a milky hue. Presently it assumed the appearance of a vasicular cloud; then it spread out and bulged down in the middle, and soon it had the appearance of a great udder, with the water oozing through it, but more copiously at and around its protuberant center. It was an interesting phenomenon, and it seemed as though nature was unbosoming her mammal to give the thirsty earth some sustenance. I have noticed these udders and water-spouts before, and thus I watched this one