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The National Geographic Magazine 



prospects and hopes of the year. The 

 cunning and tireless perseverance of 

 modern science has found some ways of 

 thwarting the mahcious designs of King 

 Frost. The orange-grower of Florida 

 has devised dresses to wrap around his 

 orange trees ; the cranberry-grower of 

 Wisconsin has learned to flood his cran- 

 berry marshes and thus keep them warm ; 

 the truck-growers of Norfolk cover their 

 early strawberries and late lettuce and 

 celery with spreads of cheese-cloth or 

 screens of slats ; the grower of sugar-cane 

 in Louisiana also has his methods of 

 frost protection. 



But all these shields against the biting 

 of the frost are worthless unless the 

 farmer is warned in time to prepare for 

 the icy visitation. The Weather Bureau 

 aims to give him this warning at least 

 twenty-four hours in advance, and to this 

 end it has developed one of the most per- 

 fect organizations in the world for dis- 

 tributing knowledge. When the weather- 

 observer scents a frost in the air condi- 

 tions of a certain region, or sees a cold 

 wave marching to invade a certain sec- 

 tion, he immediately telegraphs to the 

 principal town or city in that region. 

 Thence the warning is sent by special 

 messengers, by telegraph and telephone, 

 to every producer in the threatened re- 

 gion. Telegraph, telephone, and rail- 

 road companies join hands with the 

 weather-man to help distribute the warn- 

 ing. More than one hundred thousand 

 telegrams alone are sometimes sent within 

 a few hours. Freight trains are placarded 

 with giant signs which farmers can read 

 far off ; in some regions the farmers are 

 warned by a code of whistles from the 

 passing locomotive. In the cold wave 

 of 1898, $3,400,000 worth of fruits was 

 saved by the weather forecasts. 



STORM WARNINGS 



Undoubtedly the features of the Wea- 

 ther Bureau work which yield the highest 

 returns on our investment are the storm 

 warnings sent to masters of steamers and 

 sailing craft in our ports. We who live 

 in tight city blocks and but rarely ven- 



ture on the ocean know little of the 

 terrors of a storm. The wind that 

 whistles down the street, snatching off 

 our hats, or that rattles our blinds most 

 provokingly at night, may mean a gale 

 at sea of from forty to sixty miles an 

 hour. Between October and April our 

 coasts are swept repeatedly by mighty 

 storms which are hungry for victims, 

 while often during August and Septem- 

 ber a West Indian hurricane may tear up 

 the coast. The captains of the hundreds 

 of sailing ships, coal-barges, and coast- 

 wise craft that carry ice, coal, fruit, and 

 lumber from port to port, know too well 

 the dangers of being caught in such a 

 storm, for our coast-line contains more 

 than one Cape Fear, pointing like a dag- 

 ger at every passing vessel. The Weather 

 Bureau learns from its outposts as soon 

 as a storm enters the horizon of the 

 United States, and sends warning to the 

 ports in the threatened region. Storm- 

 signals are hoisted on the watch-towers. 

 The seamen and ships keep snug in harbor 

 while the tempest rages outside. An idea 

 of the commercial value of the warnings 

 may be gathered when we remember that 

 during every year not less than 17,000 

 vessels, most of them small, and many of 

 them easy prey for storms, leave our 

 ports between Portland and New Or- 

 leans. These storm-signals are also 

 posted in all the ports of the Great Lakes, 

 which are noted for the fury and sud- 

 denness of their storms. Formerly 75 

 per cent of the loss in shipping on the 

 Great Lakes was wrought by storms, 

 whereas now, owing to the efficiency of 

 the storm warnings, less than 25 per cent 

 of our annual loss can be attributed to 

 the work of storms. Forty-five minutes 

 after the dictation of a storm warning by 

 Chief Moore at Washington, the warn- 

 ing is placed in the hands of every sea 

 captain in every lake and ocean port of 

 the United States. 



the; records — a murderer discovered 



The records of the heat of summer and 

 of the cold of winter kept by the Weather 

 Bureau serve a useful purpose. Builders 



