From the time when man began to lose his tribal instinct and to assume national consciousness, in Egypt, the Mesopotamian Valley, and the region between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf, he has been founding empires of more or less enduring nature, and with few exceptions has builded towards the west, in the face of the prevailing winds. The center of Empire has steadily migrated along the paths of greatest storm frequency. Examine Charts 10, 11, and 18 and note the relation between density of population and the closeness of the storm tracks. The figures at the center of each brace indicate the number of storms that originated in the region of the brace during a ten-year period, and the lines leading from the brace show the tracks followed by the centers of the storms. Bear in mind that each storm covered an area of from five hundred to one thousand miles in diameter, that it was a vast rotating eddy in the atmosphere, and that its center of rotation followed one of these storm tracks. Twelve storms came from the West Indies during these ten Augusts, fifty-seven from the Rocky Mountains and none from the Pacific Ocean; while in the ten Januaries none came from the West Indies and but twenty-two from the Pacific Ocean. But the point to which your attention is directed is that, no matter what the origin, the tendency of each storm was to move towards the Ohio Valley, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and New England. This tendency gives to these regions the most frequent changes in weather, with alternations of sunshine and clouds, and changes in temperature and air pressure—conditions essential to the development of the greatest human potential. Here population is the densest, civilization the highest, and the products of man’s brain and hand greater and more diversified than elsewhere in this country, and probably than elsewhere in the world. The United States is abundantly blessed, for nearly its entire area is under the influence of high atmospheric potential. Only the region adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico and the southwest is outside of the favored area, and here the conditions are charted as medium, and not poor; at least not poor in comparison with many more purely tropical regions.