604 EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



The action of the U. S. "Weather Bureau in establishing its new 

 division is in line with recent agitation and development in other 

 countries. It is but one of many recent evidences of growing interest 

 and progress in the development of studies and investigations which 

 may be considered as belonging strictly in the field of agricultural 

 meteorology, and this progress has occurred in spite of the fact that 

 systematic organization of such work has undoubtedly been greatly 

 impeded by the European war. 



Much was expected with respect to suggestive plans and methods 

 for modifying existing weather services, to make their work more 

 useful to agriculture, from the deliberations of the permanent com- 

 mission on the organization of agricultural meteorology, appointed 

 by the International Meteorological Commission in 1913. This com- 

 mission included in its membership distinguished representatives of 

 France, Germany, Russia, Italy, and Canada. It was not able to go 

 farther than to make certain general recommendations regarding 

 the improvement of the present weather services from the agricul- 

 tural standpoint, such as simplification of apparatus for more gen- 

 eral use, systematic observations on sunshine and state of the sky, 

 wider distribution of forecasts, increase of local forecast stations, and 

 the use of weather charts in the primary schools. 



The European situation which developed soon after the appoint- 

 ment of this commission naturally precluded, for the time being, the 

 possibility of any further outcome from this source. Nevertheless, 

 the subject has received steadily increasing attention by individual 

 coimtries and investigators. In line with the general suggestions of 

 the commission, steps have been taken to make the weather services of 

 Great Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Brazil, and other coun- 

 tries more directly useful to farmers. 



The development of the British Meteorological Service with this 

 object in view has been more particularly along the line of supplying 

 information likely to be of value to agriculturists, in the form of 

 weather forecasts (including special harvest forecasts) and statisti- 

 cal reports, leaving the application of the data to the problems in 

 hand to anyone disposed to take advantage of the information 

 provided. It has been pointed out that the fundamental difficulty 

 with the British program seems to be that "the farmer has made 

 his own study of the weather and uses it in his own Avay without 

 committing the results to writing, while the Meteorological Office 

 prints large masses of data without knowing precisely in what direc- 

 tion to discuss them in relation to agricultural problems." Recog- 

 nizing this difficulty, the British Service is studying the trend of in- 

 quiries about the weather on the part of the general public, with a 

 view to approaching agricultural meteorology on lines suggested 



