WEATHER BUREAU. 49 



stitutes the science has been developed within the past two hun- 

 dred years and a larger part of it within the past seventy-five. 

 And yet meteorology as a science is still in its elementary stage 

 of growth, and there is much to be discovered concerning the 

 laws controlling the atmosphere. 



From the beginning of time the alteration of the seasons and 

 the irregular recurrence of weather conditions must have inter- 

 ested man and engaged his attention. The book of Job, believed 

 to be one of the earliest of the Biblical Canon, contains some 

 sound meteorological knowledge as true now as it was some three 

 thousand years ago. The term meteorology is more than two 

 thousand years old. It was first used by the philosopher Plato, 

 four hundred years before Christ, when he described Socrates as 

 "a sage, both a thinker on supra-terrestrial things, and an inves- 

 tigator of all things upon the earth beneath." Fifty years later 

 the philosopher Aristotle wrote a treatise in which he discussed 

 the subject of air, water and earthquakes, in this way approach- 

 ing the modern signification of the word. Originally applied to 

 appearances in the sky, whether atmospheric or astronomical in 

 their character, the term meteorology is at present used in a much 

 stricter and more scientific sense, to denote that branch of natural 

 philosophy which deals with weather and climate, and the applica- 

 tion of the knowledge so obtained to the elucidation of the 

 problems of physics, geography, the advancement of agriculture 

 and the promotion of health. 



Notwithstanding the antiquity of the term meteorology, no 

 practical advancement was made in the science until the barom- 

 eter was invented by Torricelli, in the year 1643, a y ear after the 

 death of Galileo who had shown that the air had appreciable 

 weight. The thermometer is believed to have been invented 

 about this time by the same school of philosophers, although the 

 exact date of its origin is a matter of doubt. 



Although advancement was made in other branches of the arts 

 and sciences, the next milestone in the progress of meteorology 

 we find in 1747, when Benjamin Franklin discovered the identity 

 between lightning and electricity, and also about this time dis- 

 covered that northeast storms move from the southwest. 



Less than two hundred years ago the first accounts were pub- 

 lished of ships which had scudded in a hurricane for a day or 



