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establishing should be to announce a storm as soon as it 

 appears at any point in Europe, to follow it on its course 

 by means of the telegraph, and to give timely notice of 

 it to the coasts which it may reach." 



My audience will see that this programme contains no 

 idea of prophecy, nothing but a statement that a tele- 

 graphic message would travel faster than a storm, and 

 that warnings of the storm could therefore be sent. In 

 this country the idea of storm warnings had been venti- 

 lated before 1860, for the British Association at their 

 Aberdeen meeting in the previous year, under the 

 presidency of the late Prince Consort, had passed a 

 resolution in favour of their introduction. A month after 

 the meeting the loss of the Royal Charter on the north 

 coast of Anglesea attracted universal attention, and from 

 the circumstances of that case the public drew the hasty 

 conclusion that no storm could ever come on without 

 giving timely indication of its approach. Before I have 

 done I shall hope to show how unsafe such a generali- 

 zation was and is. 



Early in 1861 the first tentative warning was sent out 

 in this country, and by the spring of 1862 Admiral Fitz- 

 Roy's system was definitely established. The admiral, 

 however, as is frequently the case with enthusiasts, tried 

 to run before he could walk, and issued warnings to cover 

 an interval of three days, a period now universally 

 admitted to be too long, but, with this exception, the 

 mode of conveying intelligence, devised by him at the 

 outset, was so sound and practical that it has met with 

 general acceptance, in Europe at least. 



The basis of his signal system was the employment of 

 solid figures, what are called, mathematically, solids of 

 revolution, to convey his messages. The use of flags was 



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