404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



of the country due to Lis advocacy, and to the letters sent by his ad- 

 vice by General Ilazen to the Governors of the States. 



Professor Abbe's unselfish devotion to the pursuit of science for 

 its advancement and not for his own, has prevented his name from 

 appearing as pi'ominently in connection with the work of the "Weather 

 Bureau as it deserved to do ; but there is a general concurrence of tes- 

 timony that he has been its guiding spirit. A gentleman, whose 

 special researches in co-operation with it, have given him a world-wide 

 reputation, characterizes him in a note to us as an enthusiastic meteo- 

 rologist, whose whole soul and energies " seem to have been given to the 

 furtherance and interests of the service. He kept well read up on all 

 meteorological matters, and had a very high appreciation of much that 

 he read ; and, when this was the case, he was always very desirous 

 of bringing the matter and the author into notice by means of 

 translations and republications. In fact, he seemed to me to be more 

 desirous of bringing the works and the claims of others into notice 

 than his own. Ilis notes on meteorological subjects, published in the 

 Smithsonian Reports, sprung from his extensive reading and desire to 

 communicate to the public whatever he found of value in the course of 

 his reading. These notes have been very valuable in keeping before 

 the mind the principal results obtained in various ways in the progress 

 of meteorological discovery. Being virtually the scientific adviser of 

 the Signal Service, and having control mostly of its scientific work, on 

 account of his generous and unselfish nature he was not content to 

 occupy the field of scientific work alone, but when General Hazen was 

 put at the head of the service and a more liberal policy toward civilians 

 and in the encouragement of scientific work was adopted, he seemed 

 to wish that all the leading meteorologists of the country could have a 

 l^art in what he considered the great work of the country, and he 

 especially interested himself in endeavoring to give a chance to prom- 

 ising young men of the country to have a part in this work." 



Another gentleman, of Avorld-wide eminence in physical investiga- 

 tion, writes to us : " I will merely state what will, I think, be gener- 

 ally admitted by all competent to express an opinion, that for the 

 good work done by the United States Weather Service, and for the 

 high estimation in which it has been held by Europeans generally, the 

 country is indebted to Professor Abbe more than to any other one man. 

 He was unquestionably the first to put into actual operation the scheme 

 of telegraphic weather-warnings, and thus to realize the suggestions and 

 hopes of Professor Henry in that direction. This he did at Cincinnati, 

 Ohio, before the organization of the United States AVeather Service. . . . 

 It was his success in this preliminary work at Cincinnati which led to 

 bis being called into the service almost immediately after the organi- 

 zation of the Weather Bureau as a branch of the Signal Service of the 

 United States Army. Ilis relations to this service have always been 

 in some degree anomalous and yet of the very highest importance. . . . 



