58 A2S"ITirAL BEPOETS Or DEPAETMENT OP AGEICULTUBB. 



monthly reports of climatological data. These improvements have 

 been a,ccomplished without additional expenditures by economies of 

 administration and efficiency of organization. 



The Bureau is in receipt of apphcations from many sections of the 

 country for extensions of its service. These include requests for river 

 and flood warnings, frost, and cold-wave information; fruit, tobacco, 

 trucking, and vineyard protective work, and water resources informa- 

 tion in the sparsely occupied region of the West, where the whole 

 region is as yet but poorly covered with reporting stations. Exten- 

 sions of the grain, cotton, sugar, rice, and other crop region services 

 are also necessary. 



The increases needed represent a normal and legitimate response 

 to the natural growth, development, and extensions of the several 

 industries and activities of the country and are necessary to meet a 

 natural increase in the use that is being made of the Weather Bureau 

 service. The commercial as well as the naval and miUtary interests 

 of the country fully justify the improvement and extension of the 

 work of the Bureau in the Panama Canal and the region of the 

 Caribbean Sea. The changing conditions in Alaska Ukewise claim 

 attention. In a few words, all the foregoing means increased service. 

 That means more reports, more warnings, more telegraphing, more 

 equipment and general supplies, and additional men. 



The details of the work of the Bureau during the past year are 

 briefly discussed under separate topics, as f oUows : 



STATIONS AND OBSERVATIONS. 



No increase has been made in the number of principal or fuUy 

 equipped stations, which is now 197. A substation previously main- 

 tained at Wausau^ Wis., for the special purpose of a flood-warning 

 service in this section, has been manned by a commissioned employee 

 of the Weather Bureau, as no other satisfactory arrangement could 

 be made to continue the station, and funds are needed for its full 

 equipment. 



OBSERVATORY BUILDINGS AND STATION OFFICES. 



Two new Weather Bureau Observatory buildings, authorized prior 

 to July 1, 1914, were completed and accepted; that at Sandy Hook, 

 N. J., on August 29, 1914, and the one at Cincinnati, Ohio, on Feb- 

 ruary 22, 1915. The latter is practically the first suburban meteor- 

 ological observatory estabhshed by the Weather Bureau and happens 

 to have been most appropriately placed at Cincinnati, where our 

 present meteorological service may be said to have started in 1869 

 and 1870, under the initiative of Prof. Cleveland Abbe. Advan- 

 tageously located on elevated ground in the north part of the city, 

 in Clifton suburbs, it should prove of exceptional value for meteoro- 

 logical work and a permanent place at which such work may go on 

 under favorable conditions for many generations to come. The pres- 

 ent down-town station in the Federal Building, in or near which the 

 Weather Bureau station was situated for nearly 45 years, is also to 

 be maintained as a printing and business ofiice. 



Contract has been let for the new cottage building and telegraph 

 ofiice authorized by Congress at the Neah Bay (Wash.) station on 

 the Weather Bureau seacoast telegraph line, near Tatoosh Island. 

 Construction work will be taken up promptly. 



