the wind was blowing gently from the south-southwest, with low scattering clouds, and before night it began to thicken and rain, while, in the night, the wind shifted to the east, blowing the rain briskly before it.  This continued a part of the following forenoon, when, taking the train west to Rockford, northwest of Dubuque, we reached nearly the edge of the easterly storm, which had been here simply a drizzling rain.  The next day the rain had ceased, the wind had shifted to the northwest, rapidly drying the earth, and the clouds, both of the upper and lower strata, were all driving hurriedly east-southeast.  We left the following day for Fort Dodge and Sioux City.  At the former place they had had a slight shower only, with shifting winds; while at Sioux City not a particle of rain had fallen, the roads being not only dry but quite dusty.  This was not a merely local storm, but was the only great easterly one covering any extent of territory and time, answering to the equinoctial, which visited the United States during last autumn.

This special limit of storms, this eddy of the winds in Iowa, deviates more or less in the district assigned to it, and, at times, some of these northeasters undoubtedly blow over Minnesota, but they are few, and much modified in kind and character.  The elevation of the State over other portions of the great valley south of it adds something probably in determining the outline of the Iowa basin of precipitation.

The range of the thermometer in the hot season is, in Minnesota, above that of places occupying the same lines of latitude; this is caused, in part, by the arid continental winds and by a less cloud-obstructed sunshine, but the heat is not correspondingly oppressive with that of other localities, since the atmosphere is not as humid.  The evaporation under this heat of summer rises out of the immediate region of the surface, and is borne away on the prevailing winds to the lake district and eastward.  It is unfortunate that there have been no tests of a hygrometic character maintained through any great period, whereby reliable data could be adduced, since it would have seemed as easy for the government to have undertaken that branch of meteorology as any other, it only requiring a more careful and accurate hand than do the other observations.  The delicacy of these experiments have proved too wearisome for private parties, and there is over the whole country a lack of this scientific evidence.  The last report of one of the cabinet ministers at Washington calls attention to the need, and benefit arising from reliable testimony, under this head, and asks an appropriation, which it is hoped may be granted, in the interests of both health, agriculture, and science generally.

The question of climatic treatment and cure for certain ills is receiving yearly increased attention, and this will continue until a specific climate is found for many of the most destructive diseases afflicting the race.