2g8 Memorial of George Brozvji Goode. 



The most important new enterprise was in the direction of organizing 

 a national meteorological service. 



The first move was made by Josiah Meigs, who was in 1814 appointed 

 Commissioner of the General L,and Office. With the exception of 

 Franklin/ he was perhaps the earliest scientific meteorologist in America, 

 having, while living in the Bermudas from 1789 to 1794, made a series 

 of observations which he communicated to the Royal Society.* 



In 18 17, or before he began to advocate Congressional action for the 

 establishment of meteorological registers in connection with the Land 

 Office, writing to Doctor Daniel Drake, in 18 17, he said: 



If my plan be adopted, and the Registers be furnished with the requisite Instru- 

 ments for Ti'w/t'ra/wt', Prt'^^z/rt', i*?;?/';/, IVind, etc., . . . we may in a course of 

 years know more than we shall be able to know on any other plan (p. 82). 



Without some system of this kind, our Country ma}' be occupied for ages, and We 

 the people of the United States be as ignorant on this subject as the Kickapoos now 

 are, who have occupied a part of it for ages past (p. 82). 



In 18 1 7 he also issued a circular to the registrars of the land offices of 

 the several States calling upon them to take regularl}^ certain observations 

 and make monthl}- official reports upon all meteorological phenomena. 



In 18 19 a cooperative movement was begun under the direction of 

 Doctor Joseph lyovell, Surgeon-General of the Army, in connection with 

 the medical officers at the principal military posts, by whom reports were 

 made at the end of each month upon the temperature, pressure, and 

 moisture of the air, the amount of rain, the direction and force of the 

 wind, the appearance of the sk}^ and other phenomena. 



The Land Office circular was a remarkable one, and led to the extensive 

 system of Patent Office observations, the results of which, published in 

 connection with those of the War Department and the Smithsonian in 

 1859, formed the foundation of scientific meteorology in the United States. 



In 1839 a most admirable paper by the French geologist, J. N. Nicollet, 

 an Essay on Meteorological Observations, was published under the direc- 

 tion of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers. Some years later the 

 lake system of meteorological observations was established by the Engi- 

 neer Department, under the direction of Captain (afterwards General) 

 George G. Meade. This included a line of stations extending from the 

 western part of Lake Superior to the eastern part of Lake Ontario. 



In 1835 a system of observations had been established under the direc- 

 tion of the board of regents of the Universit}^ of the State of New York, 

 the points of observation being at the academies of the State; and in 1837 

 the legislature of Pennsylvania made an appropriation of $4,000 for instru- 



'See Benjamin Franklin's Meteorological Imaginations and Conjectures, in the 

 Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Mansfield. 



Comnmnications made at Passy (France), in 1784, and reported in the Pennsyl- 

 vania Packet (in Congressional Library) of July 18, 1786. 



^Life of Josiah Meigs, p. 27. 



