44 



thing about calculus, at least enough to follow the developments 

 in such works as MuUer's Orundlegung or Weinslein's Physikal- 

 ische Maasshestimmungen . The more physics he knows the better. 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. XXII. No. 547 



OUR CRIPPLED WEATHER SERVICE. 



BY JAMES P. HALL, BROOKLTN, N.T. 



A recent order of the new Secretary of Agriculture stops all 

 the scientific research which, until this month, was being con- 

 ducted by the United States Weather Bureau, and limits the 

 functions of the experts in the Central OfiSce to mere forecasting. 

 Quite apart from all personal and political considerations, this is 

 a lamentable event on many accounts. 



It appears to be necessary, even in this enlightened age, to 

 prove afresh that " pure science" is a prerequisite to most of our 

 material progress. We are still under the necessity of making 

 out that Columbus, who conceived that other lands lay to the 

 westward of the great Atlantic, who visited one potentate after 

 another to secure aid for his schemes, who haunted the courts 

 and camps of Ferdinand and Isabella year after year, and who 

 backed up his case with only the calculations of "pure science," 

 really served Spain in particular, and civilization in general, quite 

 as well as the ' ' practical " men who handled the ropes and sails 

 of the three caravels. We must elaborately demonstrate, all 

 over again, to some of our fellow-countrymen that the unknown 

 inventor of the mariner's compass and those other " pure scient- 

 ists" who make charts showing the deviation of the needle, have 

 conferred as great benefits on mankind as the pilot who uses that 

 quivering bit of steel in bringing his ship safely across the seas. 

 We must be prepared to face a question whether the captain of a 

 New England fishing smack who thumbs his almanac to find out 

 at what hour the tide rises or falls on a given day is not, after 

 all, the superior (as an agent in civilization) to those learned as- 

 tronomers and mathematicians who compute the tables for that 

 little pamphlet. We must not be surprised if sane, intelligent, 

 even eminent men, tell us that all the amazing development in 

 steel production which we have witnessed in Europe and America 

 in the last quarter of a century would have come just as soon — 

 perhaps sooner — if Henry Bessemer had not carefully evolved his 

 wonderful process from chemical theories and laboratory tests, 

 nor ought it to startle us if some one insists that the sweating la- 

 borer in a rail mill, who grasps with tongs the fiery snake which 

 emer!<es from the rollers and drags it away to have its ends sawed 

 off, does more toward the building of a safe and lasting road 

 than the expert who sits at a table and figures out the precise 

 cross-section of rail that will give the greatest resistance to all 

 the complex strains to which those bars must be subjected in ser- 

 vice, even though these calculations extend over years and are 

 based on long-extended and carefully designed tests. We can- 

 not count on the universal acceptance of our opinion — if it hap- 

 pens to be our opinion — that Roebling, in comiDUting the exact 

 size and number of the wires to hold up a bridge over East 

 River, and in drafting all the plans for that wonderful structure, 

 was at all comparable in usefulness with the truckman who now 

 drives a two-horse team across it every day. If we positively 

 assert that the projectors of the great railway systems beyond 

 the Mississippi have done more than the men who drove spikes 

 ■with sledge-hammers to open up that region to settlement and to 

 provide outlets for the enormous grain and pork product which 

 has resulted, we know not how soon nor how flatly we shall be 

 contradicted. We may meekly hint that the physician who pre- 

 scribes does as much to ciu-e us as the drug clerk who compounds 

 the prescription; that the arithmetic maker is as much of a pub- 

 lic benefactor as the corner groceryman who foots up the total 

 cost of ten pounds of sugar and two pounds of coffee; that Edi- 

 son, who perfected the incandescent lamp after long years of ex- 

 periment with no end of substances for his filament, did as much 

 to give us an electric light as the man who tacks up cloth-cov- 

 ered wire in our ofiBces and screws pear-shaped globes into wall- 

 fixtures; that Graham Bell was quite as instrumental in enabling 

 us to converse over a wire with people a dozen miles away as the 

 patient girl who answers our ring and sticks a little brass plug in 

 a hole for us; and that we owe as much to the long array of de- 



signers, from Watts to Buchanan, who have brought the locomo- 

 tive engine up to its present perfection, as the engineer on the 

 "limited" express for the marvellous speed we make in going to 

 Chicago; but we must not mistake for conviction the tolerance 

 with which these utterances are received. 



And so in meteorology. There are minds so constituted that 

 they regard the observer as the equal or superior of the inventor 

 of the barometer and thermometer; the "practical" man who 

 jots down figures on a map and then draws " isobars," ' ' iso- 

 therms" and wind signs on it as more useful than the pure sci- 

 entist who, without touching pencil to paper, studies the move- 

 ments of high and low pressure areas across the country, and the 

 man who guesses what changes will occur during the next 

 twenty-four hours, in the shape, size, position, intensity and 

 other features of the cyclonic and anti-cyclonic systems, are 

 doing better work than one who discovers and formulates the 

 laws that govern those changes, and thus renders forecasting 

 possible. What makes this the more amazing is the insuiBciency 

 of our present rules for weather predictions. The principles in- 

 volved ai'e not yet fully established. The most successful experts 

 in this line realize that they are working under only a provisional 

 code that must be greatly modified and supplemented. There is 

 not a science so young and undeveloped as meteorology; there is 

 not a bureau in the national government whose maxims and pro- 

 cedure are not better established, nor, when one considers the 

 immense and varied interests — railway, shipping, agricultural, 

 commercial and individual — which are affected by the weather, 

 is there any branch of the service which affects so many people, 

 and affects them so dii-ectly, as this, unless we except the postal 

 business? Not to strain every nerve to improve the quality and 

 character of the work by fuller inquiry into fundamental theories 

 is folly, if not crime. Such a policy of neglect involves direct 

 waste, as ignorance always does. Our expenditure, year after 

 year, would not thus be made to the best possible advantage. 

 On the other hand, to use one per cent (|10,000), out of the 

 $1,000,000 appropriated for the bureau, in expert work, would be 

 a measure of true economy by gradually revealing how best to 

 use the rest. That has been true of the bureau from the start; 

 and it has never been a wiser course than it would be now. 

 Any manager of a creamery, sawmill, cotton factory, iron foun- 

 dry or railroad who deliberately threw away such a chance as 

 this for improving what everyone recognized as the inadequate 

 facilities of his business, at a trifling cost, would be set down by 

 "practical" men as strangely blind or culpably reckless. 



ANALOGOUS VARIATIONS IN SPHAGNACE.^ (PEAT- 

 MOSSES). 



BT H. N, DIXON, P. L, S. , NOBTHAMPTON, EKGLAND. 



In the "Origin of Species" (6th ed , p. 126) there is the fol- 

 lowing passage, under the heading of "Analogous Variations: " 

 "As all the species of the same genus are supposed to be de- 

 scended from a common progenitor, it ought to be expected that 

 they would occasionally vary in an analogous manner, so that the 

 varieties of two or more species would resemble each other, or 

 that a variety of one species would resemble in certain char- 

 acters another and distinct species, — this other species being, 

 according to our view, only a well-marked and permanent va- 

 riety." 



A clear example of this is of considerable value in the support 

 it gives to the theory of descent ; but, as Darwin goes on to show, 

 there are several reasons why such examples are not common. 



A very striking illustration is, however, to be seen among the 

 peat-mosses, or species of Sphagnum, and, as I do not know that 

 anyone has drawn attention to the facts from this point of view, 

 I think it may be of interest to present them briefly. Many of 

 the facts quoted below are taken from a paper by C. Jensen 

 (translated in the Revue Bryologigiie, 1887, p. 33, by F. Gravet), 

 entitled "Les Variations Analogues dans les Sphagnacees." 



Sphagiium acutifolium may be taken as a typical species of the 

 genus; in its most characteristic form it is a plant with tall, 

 slender stems, bearing at intervals fascicles of simple branches of 

 two kinds, the one (divergent) stouter and more or less horizontal, 



