290 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



him is undoubtedly due the most important step in the modern sys- 

 tem of observation, the installation of the telegraph in the service 

 of meteorological signals and predictions.* While giving however 

 his active supervision to the extensive system he had himself inau- 

 gurated, publishing many important reductions of particular features, 

 as well as various circulars of detailed instructions to observers, of 

 the desiderata to be obtained by those having the opportunities of 

 arctic, oceanic, and southern explorations, and directing the constant 

 observations recorded at the Institution as an independent station, 

 he made many personal investigations of allied subjects; as of 

 the aurora, of atmospheric electricity and thunder-storms, of the 

 supposed influence of the moon on the weather, and contributed 

 a valuable series of memoirs on meteorology, embracing a wide 

 range of physical exposition, to the successive Agricultural Reports 

 of the Commissioner of Patents, during the years 1855, '56, '57, 

 '58, and 1859. Instructive articles on Magnetism and Meteorology 

 were prepared in 1861 for the American Cyclopaedia. And one 

 of his latest published papers comprises a minute account of the 

 effects of lightning in two thunder-storms; one occurring in the 

 spring of last year (1877) at a Light-house in Key West, Florida, 

 and the other occurring in the summer of last year at New London, 

 Connecticut, f 



Archaeological Work. One of the earliest subjects taken up for 

 investigation by the Institution, was that of American Archaeology; 

 the attempt by extended explorations of the existing pre-historic 

 relics, mounds, and monuments, of the aborigines of our country, 

 to ascertain as far as possible their primitive industrial, social and 

 intellectual character, and any evidences of their antiquity, or of 



* " However frequently the idea may have been suggested of utilizing our knowl- 

 edge by the employment of the electric telegraph, it is to Professor Henry and his 

 assistants in the Smithsonian Institution that the credit is due of having first 

 actually realized this suggestion. - - - It will thus be seen that without mate- 

 rial aid from the Government, but through the enlightened policy of the telegraph 

 companies, the Smithsonian Institution first in the world organized a comprehen- 

 sive system of telegraphic meteorology, and has thus given first to Europe and 

 Asia, and now to the United States, that most beneficent national application of 

 modern science the Storm Warnings." Article on "Weather Telegraphy" by 

 Professor Cleveland Abbe. (Am. Jour. ScL, Aug. 1871, vol. ii. pp. 83, 85.) 



t Journal of the American Electrical Society, 1878, vol. ii. pp. 37-44. The communica- 

 .tion is dated Oct. 13, 1877; though not published till during the author's last illness. 



