xvi OBITUARY NOTICES. 



tions throughout the United States and the giving of notice on the 

 northern Lakes and sea-board of the approach of storms. 



When the Secretary of War sought to put these provisions of 

 law into operation he endeavored to enHst the services and council 

 of Lapham, Abbe, and others. Lapham declined but Abbe, whose 

 work began with his Cincinnati Weather Bulletin, responded heartily 

 and was appointed the assistant or meteorologist of General Albert 

 J. Myer, chief signal officer of the Army, in charge of this work. 



The following quotations from the Popular Science Monthly 

 for January, 1888, cite important features of Abbe's subsequent 

 service while the Weather Bureau was under the War Department : 



" In this position, Professor Abbe, during 1871, organized the methods 

 and work of the so-called 'probability' or study-room, in making weathctr 

 maps, drawing isobars, ordering storm signals, etc., and dictated the published 

 official tri-daily synopses and ' probabilities ' of the weather. In the same 

 year he began and urged the collection of lines of leveling, and in 1872, by 

 laborious analysis, deduced the altitudes of the Signal-Service barometers 

 above sea level. He instituted in 1872, and reorganized in 1874, the work of 

 publishing a monthly weather review, with its maps and studies of storms. 

 He urged the extension of simultaneous observations throughout the world, 

 as the only proper method of studying the weather ; and, as General Myer 

 distinctly avowed, the success of the negotiations of the Vienna Congress of 

 1874 was due to following his advice. And he organized, in 1875. the work 

 of preparing the material and publishing the ' Daily Bulletin of Simultaneous 

 International Meteorological Observations.' Especially is the organization of 

 the numerous state weather services of the country due to his advocacy, and 

 to the letters sent by his advice by General Hazen to the governors of the 

 states." 



" As chairman of the standard time committee of the American Metro- 

 logical Society, and later delegate of the United States to the International 

 Meridian and Time Conference, which met at Washington in October, 1884, 

 Abbe took an active part in all those conferences, discussions and studies, 

 which culminated in the adoption by the railroads of the United States of 

 the present system of standard times. 



" 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_ 

 prominently in connection with the work of the Weather Bureau as it 

 deserved to do; but there is a general concurrence of testimony that he has 

 been its guiding spirit. . . . He kept well read up on all meteorological mat- 

 ters, 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. His notes on meteorological subjects, pub- 



