224. NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
which has been carried on at the Naval Observatory should be made. It is greatly 
desirable that it should be continued, and extended to every point of interest in 
meteorological science and research. It is desirable that the collected and classified 
results should be compared and studied, and that abstracts of them should be 
exchanged with institutions and individuals engaged in similar investigations else- 
where, in our own or in other lands. But it is by no means desirable that the 
immense mass of facts thus collected should be embodied in an indigested or half 
digested state, into publications designed to be scattered broadcast over land and 
sea. Out of their careful study may be deducted principles which may form 
the basis of instructions to navigators worthy to be called ‘ Sailing Directions,’ and 
such instructions in any suitable form may very fitly be published by the govern- 
ment and circulated among seamen. 
“The committee, therefore, with entire unanimity, recommend the adoption of 
the following resolutions: 
“© Resolved by the National Academy of Sciences, That, in the opinion of this 
academy, the volumes entitled ‘Sailing Directions,’ heretofore issued to navi- 
gators from the Naval Observatory, and the ‘ Wind and Current Charts,’ which 
they are designed to illustrate and explain, embrace much which is unsound in 
philosophy, and little that is practically useful; and that therefore these publica- 
tions ought no longer to be issued in their present form. 
“© Resolved, That the records of meteorological phenomena and of other impor- 
tant facts connected with terrestrial physics, which, under the direction of the 
Navy Department, have been accumulated at the Observatory, are capable of 
being turned to valuable account, and that it is eminently desirable that such 
information should continue to be collected and subjected to careful discussion. 
“© Resolved, That the president of the academy be authorized and requested to 
communicate to the Secretary of the Navy a copy of the foregoing resolutions, 
and of this report, as a response to the inquiry addressed to the academy upon 
this subject by that officer.’ ” 2% 
Considering the circumstances under which this report was 
drawn up, it must be conceded that it is moderate in tone and not 
unappreciative of the labors of Maury. ‘The criticisms of the 
committee were directed against the form in which the data 
were published and the deductions drawn from them, rather 
than against the data themselves. As a result of the committee’s 
report, the publication was suspended. After the Hydrographic 
Office was regularly organized in 1866, however, the plates from 
which the charts were made were turned over to it, and in 1873 
efforts were renewed to obtain additional meteorological data 
Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1863, p. 112. 
