222 THE YEAR-BOOK OF AGRICULTURE. 



ask your assistance to make them. The fields meteorological are large ; there are many of 

 them, and all that I do know about them is, that there is in them mighty harvests of many 

 sorts. Some years ago I commenced such a system for the sea as I am now advocating and 

 as I now both see and feel the necessity of for the land. After we had been at work a little 

 \vhile and begun to gather in a harvest of useful results by discovering new truths and facts, 

 Congress authorized the Secretary of the Navy to employ three small vessels of the navy to 

 assist me in perfecting these (Jjscoveries and pushing forward investigations. 



"Now you would have said, What two things can be more remote than maps to "show which 

 way the winds blow, and a submarine telegraph across the Atlantic ? Yet it seems that they 

 are closely connected, for researches undertaken for the one are found to bear directly upon 

 the other. Among the early fruits gathered by pushing our discoveries, even with the slender 

 means afforded by Congress for the secretary was authorized to let me have these three 

 small vessels only in case they should cost nothing there is a promise of a submarine tele- 

 graph across the Atlantic. 



"One of the results of getting the wires across will be to place the farmers with their pro- 

 vision-markets and produce exactly half the distance in time and time now seems to be the 

 only true measure of distance from Europe that they now are. Let us illustrate the value 

 in one respect only of this telegraph to the farmers. A demand springs up in England for 

 breadstuffs, for instance. The news must now wait for the steamer to sail before it is ready 

 to come, and by the time she reaches our shores, and the produce can be sent forward, the 

 chief granaries of Europe have been ransacked, and the American dealer finds himself too 

 late in the market. But when that telegraphic plateau, which we have discovered in the 

 Atlantic, shall be threaded with the magnetic cable, the intelligence will be known in New 

 York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New Orleans as soon as it is in Liverpool. Straightway the 

 produce is put in motion, and instead of coming in ' the day after the fair,' as is now too 

 often the case, it will arrive with the young of the flood that comes rolling in from the East 

 to meet the demand. By this achievement, or by the achievements which these investigations 

 at sea have already accomplished in the shortening of voyages and saving of time, who have 

 been the greater gainers, the farmers or the merchants ? 



" Storms on land have a beginning and an end ; that is, they commence at one place, and 

 frequently after several days' travel end at some other ; at least, so it is held. What would it 

 be worth to the farmer, or the merchant, or to anybody, if he could know, with something 

 like certainty, the kind of weather he might always expect one, two, three, or more days ahead ? 



" I think it not at all unlikely that such, to some extent at least, would be among the first 

 fruits of this system of observations that I am proposing. 



"Certain of the observers scattered over all parts of the country would probably be 

 required to make daily reports to the central office in Washington as to the weather, each for 

 his own station say at 9 A. M. This would soon enable us to determine the laws of progress 

 as well as the march of the various states of weather, such as gales, rains, snow-storms, and 

 the like ; so that by knowing in what part of the country a storm had arisen, we should 

 learning through the telegraph the direction it might take be enabled to calculate its rate of 

 travel, and to predict within a few hours the time it would arrive at different places on its 

 line of march ; and knowing these, the telegraphic agency which the newspaper press of the 

 country has established here, would, without more ado or further cost, make the announce- 

 ment the next morning in all the papers of the land. 



"I allude to this as an exemplification only of some of the first fruits of the plan. I do 

 not suppose that we should be able to telegraph in advance of every shower of rain; but with- 

 out doubt the march of the rains that are general can be determined in time to give the peo- 

 ple in some portions of the country, at least, warning of their approach. 



" Such an office as will be required here in Washington to carry out the details of this plan 

 is already in existence. It was established by Mr. Calhoun when he was Secretary of War 

 and it is under the control of the Surgeon-general of the Army. There the meteorological 

 observations that are made at our military posts are discussed and published ; and one of the 

 most valuable and interesting reports concerning the meteorology and climates of the country 

 that has ever appeared, is now in course of publication there. Or such an office might be 



