manner and the smallest number of words. Very few people have an idea of the pains that are taken in this matter, and the extent of fact that is crowded into the few lines of such a Bulletin.

The Press Bulletin uow goes to the local printer, who furnishes immediately a sufficient number of ADVANCE PROOFS FOR PUBLICATION, which are mailed to all dailies of Iowa, and a number of weeklies which have promised to regularly insert these bulletins in full or nearly so. Upon the same terms, these advance proofs will be sent to any other Iowa paper not now on the mailing list of the Service. By this means the general condition of the weather that has prevailed, as compared to preceding years, becomes known to a very large circle of readers in Iowa.

The service is under great obligation to the publishers of the following weekly papers for the receipt of the same:

State Register, Des Moines; Gazette, Davenport; Courier, and Democrat, Ottumwa; Republican, Cedar Rapids; Der National Demokrat, Dubuque; Journal, Sioux City; Times-Republican, Marshalltown; Homestead, Des Moines; Republican and State-Press, Iowa City.

At times the value of this information is belittled, and predictions are demanded. But so long as newspapers are read through they give only information of what has occurred, and so long as actual election returns are prepared to ante-election guesses, and above all, so long as any civilized commonwealth gathers statistics to outline its own history, so long will the work of observation and recording of the actual condition of the weather, and the proper publication of the results thereof, remain the first and most important duty of any weather service.

While the advance-proof of the Press Bulletin is being printed and mailed, the preparation of the manuscript for the balance of the weather bulletin continues. This work is hurried as much as possible, and generally the entire Bulletin is mailed by the tenth of the month. The edition printed is one thousand, now generally four pages. octavo, but the number for June, 1881, was 12 pages. The mailing of the Bulletin, in 800 separately addressed and stamped parcels, closes this work for the month.

If all observers mailed their reports on the first, or latest on the second, all reports would be received on the fourth, or latest the fifth, except in extraordinary cases. It would then be possible to finish all

the tables, maps, and cards at one time, and a larger number of stations could be managed. But, unfortunately, quite a number of observers are habitually tardy, and the disposal of these TARDY REPORTS entails a great deal of extra labor and worry. Several plans have been tried

to remedy this evil, but thus far with indifferent success.

Having thus briefly indicated the work which is done during the first decade of each month at the Central Station in the preparation of the BULLETIN, the work remaining to be done for the REPORT should be pointed out. Tables and maps are completed as far as possible with the returns from tardy stations, and additional notes are prepared that could not find room in the Bulletin. More comple history of noted storms and phenomena have to be drawn up, for which tables, maps, plans, etc., must be prepared. Also the larger manuscript maps have to be reduced to a smaller scale and carefully drawn with photo-engraving ink in order that photo-electrotypes may be obtained from the same. The amount of very tedious and difficult drawing that has been done in this manner at the Central Office is very considerable; but, since the means of the Service allow no other way to map illustration, this work, however onerous, must continue to be done.

In addition to all this, the results of like period for different years have to be reduced, for each station separately, in order to arrive at general results and normals. The 26,082 rain-fall observations made. by this Service in Iowa during the lustrum from January 1, 1876 to December 31, 1880, and received at this office on nearly five thousand individual monthly reports, have thus been fully reduced, from the separate rain-fall measurements up to the normal monthly mean for each station.

On pages 3-11 of the Report for 1881, the general monthly results are given in tabular form, and yearly the rain-maps are printed from photo-electrotypes obtained from my pen-drawings. While referring to these data and to a more complete exposition of the results now being prepared for a future number of the Report, it is deemed advisable to give here the monthly maps showing the distribution of the rain-fall in Iowa during this period of five years. See map facing the title

page.

These maps, giving a graphical representation of all the rain measures taken in Iowa by this service for the lustrum 1876-80, show: that the summer rains greatly predominate; during the winter months the rain-fall is greatest in the eastern parts of the State; that from March the rains spread farther west, till in May the greatest rain-fall ̧ occurs in the southwestern parts of the State; that the rain-fall in June is most marked both in the southwest and northwest, but less so in central Iowa; that these features become more pronounced in July, when a broad belt from southeast to northwest receives the least rain; that in August the rain-fall is most abundant in the middle and eastern tiers of the State, comprising our great corn belt; that in September the belt of greatest rain-fall exhibits again a southwest-northeasterly outline, from which, by the diminution of rain-fall at the approach of the cold season, the winter distribution results.

The mean yearly rain-fall for the entire State is represented by the middle map for the same period. It will be noticed how remarkably diversified the State is in regard to the rain-fall; while generally increasing in a southeasterly direction, it is apparent that powerfully modifying causes are in operation.

A comparison of this map, representing the distribution of the yearly rain-fall in Iowa, with the following little map, exhibiting the

rain-fall are closely related, a circumstance to which the Director has already repeatedly referred to in former publications.

These rain maps are not only the first maps of the kind ever published for our own State, but they are the only monthly rain maps,

based upon uniform, reliable, and extended observations for an equally large area of the United States. This remark applies with equal force

to the map representing the yearly rain-fall; it will readily be seen that the rain-fall map published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1872, has only a few points of resemblance. It was

not to be expected

that the few irregular observations upon which the same is based could lead to a reliable result in so intricate a subject.

But the most remarkable rain map of Iowa ever published is found in thousands of Iowa homes; namely, a half-page map in Andreas' Atlas of Iowa, page

9. I here give an accurate,though greatly reduced, copy of this remarkable work of imagination, in order that it may be contrasted with the graphical represen

tation of facts given in the central map

of the group considered above. In nature, fact is always more strange than fiction.

So far as the monthly distribution of rain-fall is concerned, the result of the observations of the Service show that in western Iowa no

marked minimum of rain-fall occurs in summer, but that the rain

fall in April is but little greater than in March, while in eastern Iowa we find such a minimum in summer, but have higher rain-fall in April than in March. The tendency to a spring drouth thus is greater in the west, but summer drouths are more likely to occur in the east of Iowa. It will also be noticed by a closer inspection of the diagram given (which graphically represents the figures printed at the close of the table on page 5, of Report for 1881) that the rain-fall in the southwest is in all months greater than that of the northwest. Finally, the diagram exhibits the fact, that the summer minimum occurs in July in the southeast, in August in the north

east, and is most lasting in the south, where it extends over both July