224 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



which has been carried on at the Naval Observatory should be made. It is greatly 

 desirable that it should be continued, and extended to every point of interest in 

 meteorological science and research. It is desirable that the collected and classified 

 results should be compared and studied, and that abstracts of them should be 

 exchanged with institutions and individuals engaged in similar investigations else- 

 where, in our own or in other lands. But it is by no means desirable that the 

 immense mass of facts thus collected should be embodied in an indigested or half 

 digested state, into publications designed to be scattered broadcast over land and 

 sea. Out of their careful study may be deducted principles which may form 

 the basis of instructions to navigators worthy to be called ' Sailing Directions,' and 

 such instructions in any suitable form may very fitly be published by the govern- 

 ment and circulated among seamen. 



" The committee, therefore, with entire unanimity, recommend the adoption of 

 the following resolutions: 



Resolved by the National Academy of Sciences, That, in the opinion of this 

 academy, the volumes entitled ' Sailing Directions,' heretofore issued to navi- 

 gators from the Naval Observatory, and the ' Wind and Current Charts,' which 

 they are designed to illustrate and explain, embrace much which is unsound in 

 philosophy, and little that is practically useful ; and that therefore these publica- 

 tions ought no longer to be issued in their present form. 



Resolved, That the records of meteorological phenomena and of other impor- 

 tant facts connected with terrestrial physics, which, under the direction of the 

 Navy Department, have been accumulated at the Observatory, are capable of 

 being turned to valuable account, and that it is eminently desirable that such 

 information should continue to be collected and subjected to careful discussion. 



Resolved, That the president of the academy be authorized and requested to 

 communicate to the Secretary of the Navy a copy of the foregoing resolutions, 

 and of this report, as a response to the inquiry addressed to the academy upon 

 this subject by that officer.' " "^ 



Considering the circumstances under wliich this report was 

 drawn up, it must be conceded that it is moderate in tone and not 

 unappreciative of the labors of Maury. The criticisms of the 

 committee were directed against the form in which the data 

 were published and the deductions drawn from them, rather 

 than against the data themselves. As a result of the committee's 

 report, the publication was suspended. After the Hydrographic 

 Office was regularly organized in 1866, however, the plates from 

 which the charts were made were turned over to it, and in 1873 

 efforts were renewed to obtain additional meteorological data 



*'Rep. Nat. Acad. Sci. for 1863, p. 112. 



