Ob EEPORT OF THE SECRETARY. 



appropriation for the support of the system has thus tar been very lib- 

 eral, aud I do uot doubt it will coutinue to be so from year to year. 



Siuce the establishmeut of the Goverumeut system of weather-fore- 

 casts I have proposed, on the part of the Smithsonian Institution, to aban- 

 don the field of meteorology to General Myer, preserving to the Institu- 

 tion only the labor of discussing and reducing all the observations which 

 it has collected from its own observers and from all others in the coun- 

 try up to, say, the year 1872. To this proposition I have not as yet 

 received a reply. 



The Smithsonian system includes at present about five hundred obser- 

 vers, who give their services voluntarily. They are of two classes : those 

 who report upon the barometer, thermometer, psychrometer, rain and 

 wind gauges, and those who rei)ort upon only the temperature, the 

 wind, the face of the sky, and the rain. Of the first class there are 

 about one hundred and fifty, and these serve as standards to which the 

 observations of the second class are referred. Most of the instruments 

 of the first class have been constructed by Mr. Green. The rain-gauges 

 are of a very simple form, consisting of merely a cylinder of tinned 

 iron, two and a half inches in diameter and twelve inches deep, in which 

 the rain is measured to within half a tenth of an inch by the insertion 

 of a graduated slip of wood. 



If the system just described were incorporated with that of the Gov- 

 ernment, and an agent sent from time to time throughout the country 

 to instruct the observers, the wliole would form a more extended and 

 perfect system than any now in existence. The voluntary observers 

 would render good service in supplementing the more precise observa- 

 tions of the Army in marking the extent and boundary of special con- 

 ditions of the atmosphere and in noting casual phenomena, such as 

 thunder-storms, auroras, tornadoes, &c. 



The Smithsonian system has now been in operation more than twenty 

 years, and the Institution is at present occupied in reducing and dis- 

 cussing the observations up to 1870 for publication. The only part of 

 the results as yet published is that relating to the rain-fall. The part 

 relative to the winds will be put to press in the course of a few months. 

 All the observations on the winds which the Institution has been able 

 to collect from unpublished aud published records were placed in the 

 hands of Professor J. H. Cofan, of Easton, Pa., who has nearly com- 

 pleted their discussion. Of this discussion of the " winds of the globe," 

 which has been made at the expense of the Institution, excepting as far as 

 the labors of Professor Coffiu were concerned, the tables have nearly all 

 been completed, and the preparation of the maps and descriptions 

 alone remains to be done previous to putting the work to press. 



All the temperature-observations have been for several years placed 

 in charge of Mr. Charles A. Schott, of the Coast Survey, and are being 

 reduced as rapidly as the appropriation for the purpose from the Smith- 

 sonian income will allow. The first division of this work has been com- 



