n 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it became necessary for him to expose and prosecute the corruption of 

 Captain Ilowgate ; again, when it became necessary in self-defense 

 to expose the true reasons of the failure of the War Department to 

 properly support and succor the Signal-Service Expedition to Fort 

 Conger ; and, again, when he had occasion to defend the advantages 

 of the military character of the combined Signal Service and Weather 

 Bureau organization against those who would take it from the army 

 without making a proper provision for its work in any other depart- 

 ment. The records of his successful defense against attacks prompted 

 by implacable hate, official stubbornness, and personal ignorance are 

 to be found in the proceedings of " Courts-Martial," " Courts of In- 

 quiry," " Committee of Congress on Expenditure," and especially in 

 the " Testimony before the Joint Commission to consider the Present 

 Organization of the Signal Service," etc., which latter voluminous re- 

 port with testimony was printed in June, 1886. 



General Hazen's interest in meteorology, as before said, properly 

 dates back earlier than 1873, at which time he prepared a letter " On 

 our Barren Lands, or the Interior of the United States, west of the 

 One Hundredth Meridian and east of the Sierra Nevadas." This was 

 published in the " New York Tribune," February 27, 1874, and led to 

 a discussion in that paper and in the " Minneapolis Tribune " between 

 himself and General A. A. Custer, which is summarized in a pamphlet 

 of the above title published by Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, in 

 1875. The motive of General Hazen evidently was the protection of 

 investors and settlers against the too glowing accounts, which amounted 

 to virtual misrepresentation, on the part of the employes of the North- 

 ern Pacific Railroad ; his compilation of climatological data, and his 

 statement of personal experience, based on long residence in that re- 

 gion, largely contributed to prevent blind emigration into an inhos- 

 pitable country, while they doubtless also contributed to direct atten- 

 tion to the really valuable portions of our Northwest territory, so that 

 the permanent development of that portion of the United States has 

 been furthered by his action. It was, however, at the time, on his part, 

 a very characteristic, outspoken exposition of what seemed to him a 

 fraud and imposition perpetrated by unscrupulous financiers upon for- 

 eign immigrants and over-confiding settlers and investors. 



During his connection with the Signal-Office, General Hazen fre- 

 quently took occasion to show his appreciation of the fact that the 

 weather predictions were essentially not a matter of mere military 

 routine, but that in all departments the office had need of the work of 

 specially trained experts ; that it was a mistake to shut one's eyes to 

 the fact that, in a matter of applied science like this, some of those 

 whom the scientific world recognizes as meteorologists and physicists 

 must be employed and be required to keep the chief fully informed of 

 the progress of science. Perhaps this is best exemplified by a quota- 

 tion from his letter of March 24, 188G, addressed to a Committee of 



