WILLIAM FERREL. 391 



Not until 1853, when Ferrel was thirty-six years old, does he men- 

 tion any publication of his studies ; but in that year he sent his first 

 scientific article to Gould's "Astronomical Journal," and this marks 

 the beginning of his association with scientific men. Four years later 

 an invitation came through Dr. Gould from Professor Wiulock, then 

 Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, for Ferrel to take part in the 

 computations for that work. A year was needed to close his school 

 connections in Nashville, and in 1858 we see him settled in Cambridge, 

 with time and opportunity to gratify his studious tastes. Our image 

 of him at that time must be clad in simple attire. He brought with 

 him from his isolated life many homely peculiarities. From his awk- 

 ward manner, one could hardly have imagined the mental power that 

 placed him so liigh above most of his fellows. A gentle diffidence still 

 possessed him, and even several years later his timidity prevented him 

 from reading an important article on the tides before this Academy 

 until he had carried it to several successive meetings. 



He never pressed forward his views, but let them take such place as 

 their own value should give them. He never sought for office, but was 

 invited to fill responsible positions in the Coast Survey and the Signal 

 Service. In these congenial surroundings, he carried on his earlier 

 studies of the tides and the atmospheric circulation, and thus a well 

 deserved fame gradually grew around him. 



It is Ferrel's impress on meteorology that strikes me as most extra- 

 ordinary, not only from the explanations that he gave to its facts, but 

 from the new methods that he introduced into its study. Before him 

 no one had made any considerable mathematical analysis of the mo- 

 tions of the atmosphere ; and it was not for a number of years after he 

 had opened this new line of investigation that European masters of 

 mathematics followed him in it. Ferrel began this work at Nashville, 

 where in 185,6 he saw a copy of Maury's " Physical Geography of the 

 Sea " ; a suggestive work from its collection of facts, but sadly in need 

 of correction for its erroneous theories. As in his other studies, Ferrel 

 did not begin here by observation of the winds, but by searching for a 

 sufficient explanation of the facts observed by others. The story is 

 one that should be familiar in our scientific history, for it illustrates as 

 iew others can the real quality of scientific investigation. In Ferrel's 

 hands, meteorology was not simply a routine record of observations, 

 not simply a vague suggestion of theories. The broadest generaliza- 

 tions from world-wide observations were brought into harmony with 

 the universal laws of motion, and as a result Ferrel's theory of the 

 atmospheric circulation left all its predecessors far behiud. The more 



