TEE METEOROLOGY OF TEE FUTURE 23 



and is a splendid educator. This map gives us the facts, even though 

 the best of us often fail to perceive what they mean and what they 

 foretell. 



And right here I must remind you that this system of daily tele- 

 grams, with its maps and forecasts owes its origin and subsequent per- 

 fection almost entirely to the citizens of the city and the state of New 

 York. New York City has always been the home of meteorologists, 

 just as our bay with its sailing vessels and steamships has always been 

 filled with the bravest of sailors and navigators. Others besides Hud- 

 son and Fulton, Stevens and Ericsson, Cyrus Field and Wm. H. Webb 

 have helped to make the fame of New York and the Hudson. 



Here lived W. C. Bedfield, whose busy life as a merchant did not 

 prevent him from collecting the logs of ships and studying all the 

 characteristics of storms at sea. For forty years he devoted his leisure 

 hours to this work, publishing one research after another from New 

 York City, until the whole world understood that hurricanes, cyclones 

 and typhoons are whirlwinds, revolving and progressing as a whole, 

 moving slowly along paths that carry them from equatorial toward 

 polar regions; that our own hurricanes move westward and northward 

 over the West Indies into our south Atlantic and gulf states and thence 

 north and east along our coasts to northern Europe. 



Here lived Elias Loomis, teaching meteorology and astronomy for 

 many years as a professor at the New York University, and studying 

 the storms of the land. 



Here lectured James P. Espy, a native of Pennsylvania, who, with 

 inimitable eloquence and enthusiasm defended his great discoveries that 

 a cloud must contain the heat that was originally consumed in the 

 evaporation of the water; that the moist air by rising had cooled by 

 expansion down to its dew point; that the condensation into cloud 

 caused latent heat to be set free. 



Here, and in the northern part of our state, we had B. F. Hough 

 at Lowville, who gave us our best studies of the New York climate and 

 our first stimulating reports on the importance of forestry. 



Our dear New York, the youthful city of a century ago, was the 

 home of Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, artist and inventor, whose 

 enthusiasm triumphed over the difficulties in the way of perfecting the 

 electro-magnetic telegraph, and made it possible for our great national 

 weather bureau to carry on its work expeditiously and economically. 



At Albany Professor Joseph Henry, the father of the electro- 

 magnetic telegraph, maintained the importance of the study of the 

 atmosphere. In 1847, when he was called from Princeton to become 

 the secretary and brains of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, 

 he immediately arranged with the telegraph companies for telegrams, 

 displayed them on daily weather maps and demonstrated the possibility 

 of forecasting storms and weather. 



