290 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
quite various experiences. It is within bounds to say that the mete- 
orological offices of France and Germany began with the feeling that 
we know little of meteorology and must make great additions to our 
knowledge before attempting practical forecasts; hence in France, 
under Le Verrier, several years of experience were acquired before 
that work began. The German office, under Dove and Von Bezold, 
has thus far restricted itself to climatology and general theoretical 
studies, wisely leaving it to the new office, just now started, under 
Bornstein, to attempt predictions for the benefit of the public. The 
British office, under Fitzroy, stimulated by Glaisher’s maps of 1851, 
began boldly with predictions, but was obliged to modify its plan 
until further study had shown how to make these more acceptable. 
The American office has had a happier history, for which we must 
thank the long-continued preparatory studies and weather maps of 
Redfield, Coffin, Loomis, and Espy, which continued for forty years 
from 1820 to 1860, so that we really did know something about the 
behavior of our special American atmosphere. But especially must 
we thank the cautious policy of Prof. Joseph Henry and the prelimi- 
nary daily telegraph maps of the Smithsonian, from 1854 to 1861. 
In 1870 Gen. Albert J. Myer, favored by an extensive system of 
telegraph lines, was really justified in attempting to undertake storm 
warnings based on the daily weather map. Not only has our 
own Weather Bureau realized all that was hoped for it by its early 
projectors, but Prof. Willis L. Moore as Chief has now assured it a 
certain degree of perpetuity by adopting certain principles that 
insure steady progress for all future time, namely, that behind every 
high art there stands a higher science; that complete success in 
weather forecasts demands an equally complete knowledge of the 
sciences involved in the motions of the atmosphere; that satisfactory 
progress in predictions can only be based on corresponding progress 
in our knowledge of the physics that underlies theoretical meteor- 
ology. 
But you will say that these are only the ordinary axioms of the 
modern civilized world. True, and it is the recognition of such 
axioms that marks the domination of the human intellect. The opera- 
tions of the atmosphere are so obscure that multitudes doubt whether 
we shall ever understand it and continue to rely on the old-fashioned 
signs and the annual almanacs. Meanwhile meteorologists throughout 
the world are seeking to gain knowledge and light from every source; 
everywhere kites and balloons, mountain stations and cloud observa- 
tions are being utilized as means of studying the upper atmosphere, 
while on the other hand each national weather bureau is extending its 
field of observation horizontally, so as to secure a broader weather 
map. The insight we get by the help of mechanics, the help we can 
derive from mathematical physics, the suggestions that we get from 
