13. TERRESTRIAL PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY. 75 



government, at the request of Mr. Maury, established the 

 present system of storm signals." While fully recognizing 

 the debt that the world owes to Mr. Maury, it is evident 

 that in the preceding statements a great injustice is done to 

 the men who really built up the present system of weather 

 probabilities. In reference to this system, it is not too much 

 to say that the published reports and other documents show 

 that Mr. Maury has had nothing to do with it. The Army 

 Signal-office is a purely military institution, and it had no 

 existencer as such until gradually developed during the late 

 civil war by tlie exigencies of war and the genius of General 

 Myer. During this period Mr. Maury, as is well known, was 

 one of the most prominent leaders of the Southern cause. 

 Storm warnings did not form a part of tlie duties of the chief 

 signal officer until the Secretary of War specially intrusted 

 to him the execution of the law passed by Congress in 1870. 

 In the passage of this law Mr. Maury had no part whatever, 

 its framing and advocacy being wholly due to Professor I. A. 

 Lapham and Hon. H. E. Paine, both of Milwaukee, Wiscon- 

 sin. It is, however, to be remembered that the way had 

 been paved for the success of these gentlemen in their public- 

 spirited enterprise not only by the success of the long-estab- 

 lished system of storm signals in Europe, but by the still 

 earlier labors of American meteorologists. It was Redfield 

 who first in America, in 1838, satisfactorily established the 

 law of the j^rogression of storms. Espy, as meteorologist to 

 the Navy, and subsequently to the War Department, showed 

 by his daily weather maps for a number of years that storm 

 prediction was perfectly possible. The Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion had established the first system of telegraphic meteoro- 

 logical reports, and when, after many years, it was discon- 

 tinued. Professor Abbe revived it at Cincinnati in 1869, and 

 by actual daily predictions (which had not been attempted 

 by the Smithsonian) combined the labors of his predecessors 

 into a successful and practically useful undertaking. He has 

 himself narrated the unsuccessful attempts he made to enlist 

 the co-operation of Chicago and other cities in a national 

 system ; but to his correspondent in Milwaukee was reserved 

 the full success of this undertaking. To Professor Lapham 

 must the credit be given of having brought to a most suc- 

 cessful conclusion this Ions; line of efforts. The field of 



