210 PROGRESS OF METEOROLOGY IN 1889. 



August 15, 1889, at the age of seventy-eigbt years. For fifty-six years 

 Professor Looiuis bad been engaged in collegiate work and in original re- 

 search, having devoted the whole of his strength during the last ten 

 years to the completion of his meteorological studies. 



In a memoir by Prof. H. A. Newton (Am. Journ. Sci., June, 1890) a 

 bibliography of Professor Loomis's writings is given containing 104 titles. 

 These include contributions to astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and 

 meteorology, and a series of mathematical text-books which attained an 

 extensive circulation. 



His first work in terrestrial magnetism consisted in a series of hourly 

 observations (seventeen hours each day) of the magnetic needle for a 

 period of thirteen months in 1834 and 1835. With exception of a short 

 series by Professor Bache this was the earliest series of hourly magnetic 

 observations in America, and only one or two ante-dated it in Europe. 



Professor Loomis's early work iu astronomy was likewise at the time 

 when that science was having its beginning in this country. Comets, 

 shooting stars, and the determination of geodetic positions formed the 

 subject of his obsi rvations and study. He was among the first to en- 

 gage with Professor Bache in the telegraphic determination of longi- 

 tudes, several years before the use of the method by European astrono- 

 mers. In later years, additional important papers ui)on the aurora, 

 terrestrial magnetism and astronomy followed these early labors. But 

 meteorology has been the science to which Professor Loomis devoted 

 his best work, and in which he made the most important advances in 

 human knowledge. At the beginning of his work not a single law of 

 storms was satisfactorily demonstrated, Franklin, in the last century, 

 had discovered their progressive motion, and Brandes and Dove (1810- 

 1830) had announced their essential character to be that of extended 

 whirlwinds {unrbelstiirme.) The rival theories of Redfield and Espj', the 

 former claiming a circular movement of the winds around a storm center, 

 and the latter, following Brandes, claiming a radial direction, each had 

 its warm supporters, but no decisive victory had been gained by either. 

 Professor Loomis's first meteorological investigations, beginning iu 

 1837, were directed towards the further study of these unsettled prob- 

 lems of storm movement, and his last work a half century later, centered 

 in the statistical development of all the phenomena of cyclonic systems. 

 This example of i)atiently sustained scientific labor, directed in certain 

 well-marked lines for half a centurj^ is a rich legacy of unselfish devo- 

 tion and becomes itself a part of the history of science. 



In his second meteorological i)aper published in 1840, Professor Loomis 

 made a study of a storm occurring near the 20th of December, 183^, adopt- 

 ing graphical methods very similar to those })rincipally used by Espy, but 

 the results were not entirely satisfactory, and he waited for another oi)por- 

 tunity for continuing the investigation. This was found in two storms of 

 February, 1842. Instead of using the line of minimum depression of the 

 barometer, as before, Professor Loomis now drew maps containing lines 



