WILLIAM BAB COCK HAZEF. 117 



uals. One of his first acts was the request for co-operation on the 

 part of the National Academy of Sciences. He improved the oppor- 

 tunity to help Professor Langley in the determination of the absorbing 

 power of the atmosphere ; he accepted Professor King's offer to carry 

 observers on his balloon-voyages ; he heartily furthered Lieutenant 

 Greely's efforts to maintain an international polar station, and joined 

 with the Coast Survey in establishing a similar station, under Lieuten- 

 ant Ray, at the northern point of Alaska ; he co-operated with the 

 Bureau of Navigation in securing weather reports from the ocean; 

 he powerfully assisted the Metrological Society in its labors for the 

 reformation of our complicated system of local times, the result of 

 which was the adoption by the country of the present simple system 

 of standard meridians one hour apart. 



Equally successful was he in his efforts to co-operate in various 

 methods of disseminating and utilizing the knowledge obtained by 

 the Weather Bureau for the benefit of the business interests of the 

 country. With the telegraph companies he published the daily tele- 

 graph bulletin. Through the railroad companies he displayed the rail- 

 road train-signals visible to every farmer along the railroads. With 

 local boards of trade and other business interests he elaborated our 

 system of flood-warnings in the river-valleys. 



General Hazen was especially clear in his views as to the impor- 

 tance of giving personal credit to each man for his own personal work. 

 Routine work was credited to the assistants in charge and not to the 

 impersonal office; having assigned a special work to the best man 

 available, he took pains to give him the credit and make him person- 

 ally responsible for its success, thus securing more enthusiasm in the 

 work. 



This notice of a few prominent features in the intense activity 

 of General Hazen's life seems eulogistic rather than historical; but to 

 the contrary, the fact is that military life rarely offers a position that 

 requires the promotion of any special science, and still more rarely do 

 official or military circles present an officer who so thoroughly desired, 

 as far as allowable, to relax stringent military law and liberally inter- 

 pret cumbersome official regulations, so that scientific men might suc- 

 cessfully promote their special work. 



if. Grand 'Euet has propounded a theory that coal was originally a liquid 

 generated by the decomposition of inferior vegetation in an atmosphere highly 

 charged with carbonic acid. The carbon of the jelly-like mass thus formed, after 

 passing through various transformations into asphalt, petroleum, bitumen, etc., 

 finally assumed the form of coal. The author cites various facts connected with 

 the occurrence of coal, which, he thinks, are better explained on his theory than 

 by the usual one. 



