The question of a change in the climate of the Northern American States is examined in the able Meteorological Report of Mr. Draper, Director of the New York Central Park Observatory, for 1871. The result arrived at by Mr. Draper is, that there is no satisfactory evidence of a diminution in the rainfall, or of any other climatic change in the winter season, in consequence of clearing of the forests or other human action. The proof from meteorological registers is certainly insufficient to establish the fact of a change of climate, but, on the other hand, it is equally insufficient to establish the contrary. Meteorological stations are too few, their observations, in many cases, extend over a very short period, and, for reasons I have already given, the great majority of their records are entitled to little or no confidence. [Footnote: Since these pages were written, the subject of forest meteorology has received the most important contribution ever made to it, in several series of observations at numerous stations in Bavaria, from the year 1866 to 1871, published by Ebermayer, at Aschaffenburg, in 1873, under the title: Die Physikalischen Einwirkungen des Waldes auf Luft und Boden, und seine Klimatologische und Hygienische Bedeutung. I. Band. So far as observations of only five years' duration can prove anything, the following propositions, not to speak of many collateral and subsidiary conclusions, seem to be established, at least for the localities where the observations were made: 1. The yearly mean temperature of wooded soils, at all depths, is lower than that of open grounds, p. 85. This conclusion, it may be remarked, is of doubtful applicability in regions of excessive climate like the Northern United States and Canada, where the snow keeps the temperature of the soil in the forest above the freezing-point, for a large part and sometimes the whole of the winter, while in unwooded ground the earth remains deeply frozen. 2. The yearly mean atmospheric temperature, other things being equal, is lower in the forest than in cleared grounds, p. 84. 3. Climates become excessive in consequence of extensive clearings, p. 117. 4. The ABSOLUTE humidity of the air in the forest is about the same as in open ground, while the RELATIVE humidity is greater in the former than in the latter case, on account of the lower temperature of the atmosphere in the wood, p. 150. 5. The evaporation from an exposed surface of water in the forest is sixty-four per cent. less than in unwooded grounds, pp. 159,161. 6. About twenty-six per cent. of the precipitation is interrupted and prevented from reaching the ground by the foliage and branches of forest trees, p. 194. 7. In the interior of thick woods, the evaporation from water and from earth is much less than the precipitation, p. 210. 8. The loss of the water of precipitation intercepted by the trees in the forest is compensated by the smaller evaporation from the ground, p. 219.