37 
a 
Committee on Wind and Current Charts anil Sailing 
Directions. 
“Laspointed May 25th, 1863, at the Sgbem of the Navy Department, 
conveyed through Rear-Admiral C. H. Davis, May 23d, 1863, asking 
for an investigation and report on the subject of discontinuing the 
publication, in the present form, of the Wind and Current Charts and 
ailing Directions 
F. A. P. Barnarp, Chairman. 
J. H. ALEXANDER. ALEXIS CASWELL. 
Wm. CHAUVENET. J. H. C. Corrin. 
J. F. FRAZER. A. Guyot. 
J. E. Himearp. Beng. PEIRCE. 
JosEPH WINLOCK. 
J. P. Lester. (June 2d, 1863.) 
J. D. Dana. (July 15th, 1863.) 
The Committee on Wind and Current Charts reported 
January 9th, 1864, when the following resolutions offered by 
the Committee, were adopted : — 
Resolved, by the National Academy of Sciences, That in 
the opinion of this Academy the volumes entitled “ Sailing 
Directions,” heretofore issued to Navigators 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 use- 
ful, and that therefore these publications ought no longer to 
be issued in their present form. 
Resolved, That the records of meteorological phenomena 
and of the important 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 
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