Your Vice-President has elsewhere expressed his opinion that monsoon winds, applying the term by liberal construction to signify winds which recur with returning seasons, cannot with {48} any degree of correctness be asserted to prevail in the United States. It is true that the prevailing surface winds of the greater part of the United States come from the western quadrants--that is, between southwest and northwest--and so are in substantial harmony with the general atmospheric circulation as shown by the upper-wind currents of Mount Washington (from the northwest) and Pike's peak (from the southwest). But, apart from the easterly and northeasterly trades on the Florida coast, it appears from the records that in no case for any considerable section of the country do 50 per cent. of the winds blow, for any consecutive number of months, either from any single point or from two neighboring points of the compass. Occasionally, however, the local configuration of the country is such that winds are drawn up or down valleys, and, being diverted from their free and proper direction, the wind in such cases follows the trend of the valley or depression. * * * * * In general your Vice-President would feel inclined to refer only casually to the work proceeding from the Bureau over which he has the honor to preside, but this year has been marked by special researches and investigations of general interest. As the work of investigation has been entrusted to the professors of the Signal Service, due credit should not be refused them from their own official chief. Special reference should be made to the work of Professor Charles F. Marvin, whose successful experiments on wind pressures and velocities have attracted the attention of experts both in Europe and in this country. Unfortunately there was available only a small sum (about one hundred dollars) for the expense of experiments, but with this petty sum, supplemented by his ingenuity, Professor Marvin has very satisfactorily determined the coëfficients of the various forms of the Robinson anemometer, with which instrument the velocity of the wind is very generally determined. Following these investigations, the Royal Meteorological Society of England reopened the question, which, after a costly set of experiments with results widely differing from those of Professor Marvin, had been considered closed.