Our Heralds of Storm and Flood 



593 



of giant steel bridges or steel sky-scrapers 

 consult them to see how much they must 

 allow for the expansion and contraction 

 of the steel used. Lawyers consult them 

 to establish or to break down a witness's 

 testimon}-. Not long ago a man was on 

 trial in Illinois, accused of murdering an 

 aged woman. He was unable to prove 

 an alibi, and it looked as if he would be 

 convicted. The principal evidence against 

 him was that of a laborer, who on the day 

 of the murder had been digging a ditch 

 opposite the house where the murder was 

 committed. The laborer stated that he 

 had climbed out of his ditch about eleven 

 to take a drink from his bucket : he re- 

 membered the exact hour because he 

 had looked at. his watch at the same time 

 to see how near it was to dinner-time. 

 Glancing across the street, he was hor- 

 rified to see, through the open window, 

 the prisoner striking the woman. Be- 

 fore he could get to the house the assas- 

 sin had fled, but his identification had 

 led to the arrest and was now threaten- 

 ing to hang the man. 



The evidence was straightforward and 

 seemed conclusive. The prisoner's law- 

 yer, however, shrewedly consulted the 

 records of temperature kept by the 

 weather station, and found that on the 

 day of the murder there had been a cold 

 spell of such severity that if the bucket 

 of water had remained out all the morn- 

 ing, as it did, according to the witness's 

 story, the water would have been a 

 solid chunk of ice by eleven o'clock. This 

 discovery led to the acquittal of the 

 prisoner and subsequently to the arrest 

 of the ditch-digger, who, it developed, 

 was the real criminal. 



CROP BULLETINS, BALLOON RECORDS. ETC. 



The Weather Bureau is doing much 

 work that there is not space to describe. 

 It issues weekly crop bulletins, summa- 

 rized from the reports of many thousand 

 observers, telling how the rain or 

 drought, or cold or heat, has affected 

 the wheat, corn, and other crops. It 

 issues snow bulletins in the West, telling 

 how much snow has falen in the moun- 



tains, and hence how much water may 

 be expected during the summer for the 

 irrigation works. It publishes special 

 rain forecasts in the raisin districts of 

 California, which give the farmer time 

 to get his trays of dried raisins under shel- 

 ter before the deluge. It has recently 

 made plans for the exploration of the 

 upper air by balloons. A self-recording 

 instrument of extreme lightness, invented 

 by Mr C. F. Marvin, of the Bureau, 

 is attached to a small rubber balloon and 

 set loose. The balloon shoots up four 

 or five miles, getting larger and larger 

 as the pressure of air diminishes, until 

 it finally bursts. The fall immediately 

 opens a parachute, upon which the instru- 

 ment floats down very slowly, recording 

 the character of the air as it descends. 

 The plan is to liberate several hundreds 

 of these balloons simultaneously in differ- 

 ent parts of the country. As a reward is 

 offered for their return, and as they make 

 very conspicuous objects in the sky, the 

 Weather Bureau hopes to recover most 

 of the instruments, and thus obtain facts 

 about the upper-air currents which are 

 most important and little understood. 



Chief Moore also plans, through the 

 development of wireless telegraphy, to 

 get weather reports from steamers in 

 mid-ocean. He has for years urged the 

 countries of Europe to take simultaneous 

 international observations ; for meteo- 

 rology is not bounded by political geog- 

 raphy, but is an international science. 

 He also wages a ceaseless war against 

 the so-called "long-range" weather proph- 

 ets, the charlatans who are continually 

 humbugging credulous people. 



Professor Willis L. Moore, Chief of the 

 United States Weather Bureau, entered 

 the service in 1877. He began at the 

 bottom. By hard work, study, and nat- 

 ural ability he won steady promotion, and 

 in 1895 was appointed head of the serv- 

 ice by President Cleveland. 



We are more interested in, or at least 

 we talk more about, the daily weather — 

 the health of the earth, it might be 

 called — than of any other subject. "It's 

 rather windy today, isn't it?" is the salu- 



