December 26, 1895] 



NATURE 



187 



who is responsible for the Education Department of Government, 

 I am, jjerhaps, officially designated for this position. I need 

 hardly say that I shall find it somewhat difficult to give very 

 constant attention to the duties which will devolve upon the 

 Committee. I trust, however, that the General Committee will 

 lie relieved of any work of a detailed character by the Executive 

 Committee which you have just appointed. However, I can 

 only assure you that any further services which I am able to give 

 to this cause will be very cheerfully rendered, and I think I may 

 conclude by congratulating you on the character of the proceed- 

 ings which have taken place this afternoon. I assure you I feel 

 it a very high honour indeed to have been permitted to preside 

 on such an occasion, and over a meeting containing so many dis- 

 tinguished persons as those who have assembled here this 

 afternoon. 



The meeting then adjourned. 



Since the meeting of the General Committee, two meet- 

 ings of the Executive Committee have been held. At the first 

 of these, at which Lord Shand accepted the office of chairman, 

 it was reported that a number of foreigners of eminence had ex- 

 pressed a wish to be associated with the proposal to commemo- 

 rate Mr. Huxley's distinguished services to humanity. It was 

 resolved, in the first instance, to invite subscriptions from the 

 members of the General Committee. At the second meeting, 

 held on Wednesday last, it was reported that the subscriptions, 

 which at the general meeting had amounted to ;^557, had been 

 increased to about ^^1400, and it was resolved that a wider 

 appeal for subscriptions should now be made to the friends and 

 admirers of Mr. Huxley amongst the general public. The 

 Honorary Secretary stated that in America committees were in the 

 course of being formed to promote the realisation of an adequate 

 Fund. The Committee resolved to communicate, by means of a 

 Sub-Committee of their number, with Mr. Onslow Ford, R.A. , 

 who had the advantage of being well acquainted with Mr. 

 Huxley, in reference to the statue, which it is proposed should 

 be erected beside those of Darwin and Owen in the Natural 

 History Museum, South Kensington. The extent to which the 

 Committee may be able to carry out the other intended objects of 

 founding exhibitions, scholarships, and medals for biological 

 research and lectureships, and possibly in assisting the republi- 

 cation of Mr. Huxley's scientific works, will of course depend 

 on the subscriptions which may now be received. These may 

 be sent to the Treasurer, Sir John Lubbock, or the Bankers, 

 Messrs. Robarts, Lubbock, and Co., 15 Lombard-street, E.C. ; 

 or to the Secretary, Prof. G. B. Howes, Royal College of Science, 

 South Kensington. 



The amount received to December 20 was ;^I535. 



The court of the Fishmongers' Company, in consideration of 

 the eminent and important services rendered by Huxley to the 

 cause of technical education, has agreed to give a scholarship 

 of £(iO per annum to the City and Guilds of London Technical 

 College, Finsbury, to be called "the Fishmongers' Company's 

 Huxley Scholarship," to be held for three years by any scholar 

 who has given evidence of high scientific attainments, to enable 

 him to proceed to the Central College at Kensington. 



RELATIONS OF THE WEATHER BUREAU 

 TO THE SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY OF THE 



UNITED STATES} 

 TT is a matter of much pleasure to me that I am allowed the 

 privilege of speaking at a joint session of this Association — 

 representing as it does within the confines of its admirable 

 organisation the scientific thought of our country. This is the 

 Mecca towards which annually journey all those who wish, each 

 to contribute his mite to the sum of human knowledge ; each 

 inspired with an ambition to add even one flickering ray to the 

 great luminous orb which to-day is shedding the benign light of 

 wisdom even unto the uttermost recesses of the earth ; subduing 

 the barbarous instincts of man, and warming and invigorating 

 into life the better impulses of his nature. Thus is civilisation 

 advanced, and thus is humanity elevated to higher and higher 

 planes of existence. 



I hope to be a worker in the ranks of this great army, and as 

 the science of meteorology can hardly be said to have passed 



1 Read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at the Springfield Meeting, by Prof. W. S. Moore, Chief of the U.S. Weather 

 Bureau. (Reprinted from Science.) 



NO. 1365, VOL. 53] 



beyond the embryonic state, I feel that the realms of investiga- 

 tion are boundless, and that the opportunities are correspond- 

 ingly great. 



As the Chief of the greatest meteorological system in the 

 world, and with the power to control, under the direction of 

 the Secretary of Agriculture, not only its executive func- 

 tions, but the lines of future scientific investigation, I fully 

 realise the great responsibility that rests upon me, and that at the 

 bar of public and scientific opinion I shall, in the years to come, 

 justly be held to a strict accountability for my stewardship. 



Before considering the lines of investigation which can 

 consistently be prosecuted by the Weather Bureau, it will l)c 

 well to note the law which perscribes the duties of the Chief. 



By an Act Congress approved October i, 1890, Sec. 3, 

 Statutes at large, Fifty-first Congress, p. 653, it is provided : 



"That the Chief of the Weather Bureau, under the direction 

 of the Secretary of Agriculture, on and after July i, 1891, shall 

 have charge of the forecasting of weather, the issue of storm 

 warnings, the display of weather and flood signals for the l>enefit 

 of agriculture, commerce and navigation, the gauging and 

 reporting of rivers, the maintenance and operation of "sea-coast 

 telegraph lines, and the collection and transmission of marine 

 intelligence for the benefit of commerce and navigation, the 

 reporting of temperature and rainfall conditions for the cotton 

 interests, the display of frost and cold wave signals, the distri- 

 bution of meteorological information in the interests of agricul- 

 ture and commerce, and the taking of such meteorological 

 observations as may be necessary to establish and record the 

 climatic conditions of the United States, or as are essential for 

 the proper execution of the foregoing duties." 



It will be seen that the main object for the existence and 

 continuation of this Bureau is to give warning of the approach 

 of storms, and therefore that the proper line of investigation 

 should be for the purpose of determining the true philosophy of 

 storms. The goal to be striven for is the improvement of 

 weather forecasts, and surely one of the pre-requisites to deter- 

 mine coming events is a thorough knowledge of existing 

 conditions. 



To those who have read every important treatise on meteor- 

 ology, and who have studied every text-book on the subject, it 

 is painfully patent that we are extremely ignorant of the 

 mechanism of storms, of the operations of those vast and subtle 

 forces in free air which give inception to the storm, and which 

 supply the energy necessary to accelerate cyclonic action when 

 formed, or to disperse the same when fully in operation. We 

 know that great atmospheric swirls in the shape of high and low 

 pressure areas alternately drift across the country at intervals of 

 two or three days ; that the atmosphere flows spirally into the 

 cyclonic or low-pressure system and outward from the anti- 

 cyclonic or high-pressure system, that the in-drawn east and 

 south winds on the front of the storm are warm, and that the 

 inwardly-flowing north and west winds are cold. 



The theories of Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Ferrel, and others, 

 teach that our great storms are composed of immense masses of 

 air gyrating about a vertical or nearly vertical axis, drifi:ing 

 eastward, and at the same time drawing in warm easterly currents 

 at the front, and cold westerly currents at the rear ; that the com- 

 mingling of these two as they rise to greater and greater elevations, 

 near the regions of the cyclonic centre, throws down volumes of 

 rain or snow ; that as precipitation occurs with the ascending 

 currents, the heat of condensation energises the cyclonic circula- 

 tion ; that the air at the centre of the storm is relatively warm, 

 is rarefied by centrifugal force, and by reason of less density, rises 

 to a great elevation, and in the upper regions of the atmosphere 

 flows away laterally to assist in building up high-pressure areas 

 on either side. 



The high and low pressure areas are supposed to be carried 

 eastward by the general easterly drift of the atmosphere in the 

 middle latitudes, somewhat as eddies are carried along by water 

 in a running stream. 



But, unfortunately for the complete accuracy of these theories, 

 the forecaster often finds heavy downpours of rain without any 

 cyclonic circulation, and no convectional system in operation ; 

 again over immense areas of country, especially in the Rocky 

 Mountain region, for many months in the year condensation 

 occurs not at all in the warmer easterly currents flowing into the 

 storm centre, but almost exclusively in the westerly portion of 

 the storm area, where the cold north and west winds are flow- 

 ing in. 



Again, many investigators to-day have good reason to doubt 



