302 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



shores, so in the Pacific Ocean is the cyclopean workshop of the 

 atmosphere, in which are produced and whence are sent forth the 

 meteors that perpetually travel over North America, and substantially 

 mold its climate and weather. To cover the North Pacific, therefore, 

 with a network of " floating observatories," contributing their " simul- 

 taneous weather-reports " to the Signal-Service Bureau, is one of the 

 grand desiderata of American meteorology. A ship at sea is one of 

 the best of stations for a simultaneous meteorological system. The 

 value of its records is enhanced by the considerable change of the 

 ship's location occurring once every hour ; and the law of self-interest 

 at least should compel every shipowner and shipmaster to enlist in a 

 joint observational work which inures to his own safety and lends a 

 helping hand to every meteorologist. Without the data, to be collected 

 only by vessels sailing on the North Pacific, the prevision and predic- 

 tion of storms and weather-changes that transpire in the Pacific and 

 Western States, and are thence projaagated to the East, can not be put 

 upon a sure footing. With such marine simultaneous data, the work of 

 weather-forecasting and storm-warning for the Pacific coast and the 

 whole country will be greatly simplified, and the accuracy of the work 

 much enhanced, if not assured. If the solar light of day comes first 

 from the East, we may nevertheless predict that the flood of scientific 

 light necessary to elucidate the still obscure phenomena of American, 

 and especially Western meteorology, will break upon us from the Great 

 Western Ocean. "The improvement'''' in the national tri-daily "In- 

 dications," etc., of the Signal-Service, which General Myer hopes for, 

 as his oceanic simultaneous work " progresses," can not be doubted. 



If anything more is needed to enforce this view of the immense 

 value of North Pacific researches for the development of American 

 weather-telegraphy, it is found in the fact that the cyclones of that 

 ocean recurve from the Asiatic coast, and follow the warm current 

 known as the " Kuro Shoo,^^ or " Japan Current " — ^the congener of 

 our Atlantic "Gulf Stream" — in its northeasterly extension to the 

 northwestern coasts of the United States. This mighty " river in the 

 sea " is a natural storm-channel. " The influence of the Kuro Siwo," 

 says Captain Silas Bent, the original and careful investigator of its phe- 

 nomena, " upon the climate of Japan and the west coast of North 

 America is, as might be expected, as striking as that of the Gulf 

 Stream on the coasts bordering the Atlantic." And Kerhallet, the well- 

 known French hydrographer, tells us that it " crosses all the northern 

 part of the Pacific Ocean, and makes itself felt on the northwest coast 

 of America." " The track of typhoons in th^ rihina Sea," according to 

 one of the highest nautical authorities, Labrosse, " lies between north- 

 northwest and south-southwest, then toward the north, and afterward 

 turns sharp around tovHird the east, in the direction of the Bashee Isl- 

 ands," whence in 1854 Mr. Redfield traced a number of them far away 

 toward the American coast. These terrific rotatory gales rival, if they 



