year, but receiving from superior, and giving off to lower, strata an equal amount of moisture during the winter half.--Johnstrup, Om Fugtighedens Bezagelse i den naturlige Jordbund. Kjobenhavn, 1866.] This conclusion, however applicable to the climate and to the soil of France, is too broadly stated to be received as a general truth; and in countries like the United States, where rain is comparatively rare during the winter and abundant during the summer half of the year, common observation shows that the quantity of water furnished by deep wells and by natural springs depends almost as much upon the rains of summer as upon those of the rest of the year, and consequently that a large portion of the rain of that season must find its way into strata too deep for the water to be wasted by evaporation. [Footnote: According to observations at one hundred military stations in the United States, the precipitation ranges from three and a quarter inches at Fort Yuma in California to about seventy-two inches at Fort Pike, Louisiana, the mean for the entire territory, not including Alaska, being thirty-six inches. In the different sections of the Union it is as follows: North-eastern States.................. 41 inches, New York.............................. 36 " Middle States......................... 40 1/2 " Ohio.................................. 40 " Southern States....................... 51 " S. W. States and Indian Territories... 39 1/2 " Western States and Territories........ 30 " Texas and New Mexico.................. 24 1/2 " California............................ 18 1/2 " Oregon and Washington Territory....... 50 " The mountainous regions, it appears, do not recieve the greatest amount of precipitation. The avenge downfall of the Southern States bordering on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico exceeds the mean of the whole United States, being no less than fifty-one inches, while on the Pacific coast it ranges from fifty to fifty-six inches. As a general rule, it may be stated that at the stations on or near the sea-coast the precipitation is greatest in the spring months, though there are several exceptions to this remark, and at a large majority of the stations the downfall is considerably greater in the summer months than at any other season.] Dalton's experiments in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798 appeared to show that the mean absorption of the downfall by the earth in those years was twenty-nine per cent. Dickinson, employing the same apparatus for eight years, found the absorption to vary widely in different years, the mean being forty-seven per cent.