GEOGRAPHICAL RESEARCH IN THE UNITED STATES 291 



part is as yet surveyed. Of foreign coasts, the Hydrographic 

 Office has recently surveyed and charted the western coast of the 

 peninsula of Lower California, one of the Mexican states, about 

 1,000 miles in extent. It has extended our knowledge of the sea 

 ab3'sses by various lines of soundings in the interest of projected 

 cable lines, and it lessens the perils of ocean travel by the monthly 

 issue of pilot charts of the North Pacific and North Atlantic 

 oceans, containing data as to derelicts, ice-fields, storm tracks, 

 and other information useful to the mariner. The systematic 

 collection of data for these pilot charts results in a constant 

 increase in our knowledge of the geography of the sea. 



Weather Bureau. — To investigate the history, structure, and 

 contents of the crust of the earth is the peculiar province of the 

 Geological Survey ; to study the currents, movements, and char- 

 acteristics of the earth's salt-water envelope is the province of the 

 Coast Survey and the Hydrographic Office; to investigate the 

 character, amount, habits, and migrations of its contained life is 

 the province of the Fish Commission. The study of the all- 

 enveloping gaseous ocean in which we live and move — that in- 

 visible sea of air with its ever-varying moods of restful calm and 

 fierce storm, now delightfully transparent and now somber or 

 menacing with storm-cloud, sometimes scorching and sometimes 

 freezing — the study of this gaseous envelope, of the laws which 

 govern its behavior and the daily deduction from these laws 

 which foretell to the sailor, the farmer, the traveler what he may 

 expect — is the peculiar province of the Weather Bureau. May 

 we not properly call this field of study the geography of the air? 

 And has it not ever formed a large chapter in our physical geogra- 

 phies? The weather service in the United States is 27 years old, 

 dating from 1870. At first it was a military organization called the 

 Signal Service, and its purpose was to give " notice on the north- 

 ern lakes and on the seacoast, by magnetic telegraph and marine 

 signals, of the approach and force of storms." Its primary object 

 was, therefore, not the study of climate, but the prediction of 

 storms. It seeks to tell the weather of tomorrow rather than 

 that of the last year or the last century. But, as we are forced to 

 judge the future by the past, the study of meteorological records 

 is not neglected, and within the bureau there has ever been a 

 corps of scientific experts at work upon such lines as gave prom- 

 ise of producing something new or useful for the forecaster. The 

 bureau is now a civilian one, having been transferred from the 

 War Department to the Department of Agriculture. Its present 



