S o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Service would meet with opposition, even among those who would be 

 most benefited by such extension. Yet the demands of science are 

 daily becoming more inexorable, and the progress of meteorology 

 toward the stand-point of an exact science is assured by the labors of 

 those who have charge of the Signal Service. 



At one time most of our American colleges and universities con- 

 ducted meteorological observations. These observations were indus- 

 triously made and conscientiously carried on, but were very much like 

 private measurements of rain-fall and barometer heights notes of the 

 first coming of the golden robin in spring and journals of cold or hot 

 days. Meteorological observations which are not taken simultaneously 

 over extended areas are of little value, save to the compilers of local 

 almanacs. The Signal Service, having relieved four universities of 

 their onerous meteorological responsibilities, doubtless feels indebted 

 to them for pointing the way, and would be grateful if the universities 

 could lead them one step higher, since it is one of the functions of a 

 university to be always a little in advance of the ruling conditions of 

 popular knowledge. Some plan of co-operation might be devised, by 

 which the universities and colleges along our Atlantic sea-coast could 

 aid the Signal Service in testing the value of more delicate investiga- 

 tions upon atmospheric changes than can be carried on at the present 

 Government stations. Harvard University, Yale, Columbia, Princeton 

 Colleges, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins Univer- 

 sity could, doubtless, provide suitable rooms and exj^erienced assistants 

 for testing the value of simultaneous observations upon various phe- 

 nomena which are not at present taken into account in weather predic- 

 tions. "We judge at present of climatic changes by observations above- 

 ground ; it may be that the presence of earth-currents of electricity, 

 of fluctuations in the earth's magnetism, of waves of heat through the 

 superficial layers of the earth, may reveal important factors in an- 

 nouncing meteorological changes. Simultaneous observations, upon 

 the slight earthquake-shocks which are continually pulsating beneath 

 the apparently calm surface upon which our great cities are built, may 

 have important relations to conditions of heat and cold. The mere 

 mention of these unobserved phenomena is sufficient to show the state 

 of our ignorance, and to lead us to expect that investigations in phys- 

 ical laboratories will be of practical value in leading the Signal Service 

 to extend its usefulness. 



The electrical state of the air is supposed to have great influence 

 upon the proper conditions for fair weather and for storms, and to also 

 affect the states of health and disease ; but no definite information has 

 been collected which bears upon these points. The Signal Service 

 would aid the science of meteorology very greatly by extending ob- 

 servations on the electrical state of the air over large areas of ter- 

 ritory. 



The apparatus for studying the electricity of the atmosphere is 



