SKETCH OF MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY. 403 



an investigation should result in favor of this view in preference 

 to that ; and never to attempt by premature speculation to antici- 

 pate the results of investigations, but always to trust to the inves- 

 tigations themselves." The book met a large demand at home and 

 abroad, more than twenty "editions having been sold in England 

 alone ; and it was translated into the French, Dutch, Italian, 

 Swedish, and Spanish languages. Following this came the as- 

 sembling of the Meteorological Congress at Brussels, in 1853, of 

 the chief nations interested in commerce, at which a uniform sys- 

 tem of observations on land and at sea was resolved upon. Among 

 the incidents of the conference was a letter in 1857 from Hum- 

 boldt, "at the age of ninety years," relating to its results, and 

 offering " to my illustrious friend and associate . . . the tribute 

 of my respectful admiration. ... It belongs to me, more than to 

 any traveler of the age, to congratulate my illustrious friend upon 

 the course which he has so gloriously opened." 



Lieutenant Maury, after returning from the Brussels Confer- 

 ence, pressed the scheme of co-operation in meteorological obser- 

 vations on land. In addresses delivered at agricultural societies 

 in 1855 he urged farmers to make daily observations of weather 

 conditions and the state and yield of the crops, to be sent to him, 

 as sailors were sending their observations at sea ; and he advised 

 them to seek from Congress measures for the establishment of a 

 central office where these reports could be digested and the results 

 sent monthly, weekly, or even daily, to all parts of the country, so 

 that farmers could be " warned of the approach of storms, severe 

 frosts, etc., that might prove injurious to the crops." He denned 

 this proposition in an address before the United States Agricultu- 

 ral Society in January, 1856, as a concerted plan, the idea of which 

 was to spread the network of instruments and observers in this 

 country and over other parts of the world also, to which he was 

 assured the co-operation of men of science abroad would be given. 

 About three years afterward, in an address at Decatur, Ala., as if 

 foreseeing that his services might become forgotten, he said: 

 " Take notice, now, that this plan of crop and weather reports is 

 my thunder ; and if you see some one in Washington running 

 away with it, then recollect, if you please, where the lightning 

 came from." The whole record of Maury's meteorological work, 

 and his part in advocating this plan, were reviewed by Senator 

 Harlan, in a committee report to the United States Senate, made 

 in 1857. His scheme also embraced a system of meteorological 

 observations on the Great Lakes. Records had already been kept 

 for many years by the army, to which, Maury acknowledged, 

 * alone we are indebted for almost all we know concerning the 

 climatology of the country " ; but he explained that their value 

 was retrospective ; while the observations he proposed were to 



