THE INTERNATIONAL WEATHER-SERVICE. 293 



were commenced, and since then have been exchanged in semi-monthly 

 communications. These reports, steadily increasing, now cover the 

 combined territorial extent of Algiers, Australasia, Austria, Belgium, 

 Central America, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, 

 Greece, Greenland, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, the 

 Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, 

 Tunis, Turkey, British North America, the United States, the Azores, 

 Malta, Mauritius, the Sandwich Islands, South Africa, South America, 

 and the West Indies, so far as they have been put under meteorological 

 observation. On July 1, 1875, the daily issue of a printed bulletin, ex- 

 hibiting these international simultaneous reports, was commenced at 

 the Army Signal-Office in Washington, and has since been maintained. 

 A copy of this " International Bulletin " is furnished each cooperating 

 observer. This publication combines for the first time of which we 

 have any record the joint labors of the nations in a research of this 

 kind for their mutual benefit. As the network of cooperating stations 

 already spreads over so vast a proportion of the land-surface of the 

 globe, there is needed only the more general cooperation of the naval 

 and merchant fleets of the world to supply ample data for a compre- 

 hensive study of the atmosphere as a unit. This need is now grow- 

 ingly appreciated, and nine series of marine reports, each containing 

 the simultaneous observations of a number of sea-going vessels,* 

 have been added to supplement the similar reports contributed by 

 the land-observers, swelling the total observational force to 500 

 laborers. The harvest of physical data already garnered by this force, 

 and daily increasing, will be invaluable for all future weather investi- 

 gations. As the Committee of the Scottish Meteorological Society 

 recently said, " This truly cosmopolitan work, which the United States 

 are alone in a position to undertake, thanks to the liberality and enter- 

 prise of their Government, will bring before us month by month the 

 general circulation of the earth's atmosphere, and raise if it does not 

 satisfy many inquiries lying at the very root of meteorology, and inti- 

 mately affecting those atmospheric changes which meteorologists have 

 been recording." It will greatly enrich the meteorology of the ocean 

 and aid navigation, by supplying data for deducing those true mean 

 physical values which teach the mariner at sea where he may find " a 

 fair wind and a favorable current," how he may best utilize the forces 

 of nature and elude its terrors. It will afford material for the renova- 

 tion of the climatology and sanitary meteorology of regions not now 

 fully investigated. But, above all, it will facilitate the elucidation of 

 the laws of storms and those associate phenomena which conspire to 

 produce the many-colored phases of " the weather." 



The cardinal object of this vast scientific enterprise, as the reader 

 may anticipate, is the study of the atmosphere as a unit. The atmos- 

 pheric ocean must be viewed by every thinking mind as a whole, whose 

 * The number of marine observers now exceeds one hundred. 



