622 



SCIUJVCU. 



[Vol. VUI., No. 204 



rate and comprehensive weather-service will enable 

 the Union Pacific to save thousands of dollars 

 every week to its patrons. If storms can be 

 accurately predicted beforehand, the stockmen can 

 withhold their shipments and allow cattle to be 

 sent through without danger of perishing by being 

 caught in blockades or blizzards. One prominent 

 cattleman recently said that such a system of pre- 

 dictions, if accurate, would be the means of sav- 

 ing him fifty thousand dollars every year. The 

 practical working of this service will be watched 

 with much interest by raiload men in all parts of 

 the country. 



In the prominent mention given just now to the 

 meteorological enterprise of the Union Pacific 

 raih-oad, it should not be forgotten that very con- 

 siderable contributions towards increasing the 

 value of the signal service are made by other 

 roads. The display of weather-flags on many 

 western and southern lines is no small matter, for 

 one of the greatest difficulties that the service has 

 to contend with is the delay in placing its indica- 

 tions in the hands of those who wish to know 

 them. The predictions based on the seven a.m. 

 observations, and issued about ten o'clock from 

 Washington, are read by most persons only at five 

 or six o'clock in the evening, or later, when the 

 time covered by the prediction is already well 

 advanced. Besides this, there is a large contribu- 

 tion of temperature, wind, and general weather 

 observations made to the Pacific coast division of 

 the service, at present in charge of Lieutenant 

 Glassford, by the Southern Pacific railroad com- 

 pany. Observations are taken daily at seven a.m. 

 at about a hundred and twenty stations on their 

 wide-branching lines, making a valuable addition 

 to the tri-daily reports from the twenty regular 

 stations of the service on the Pacific slope. 



The first published print of the topographi- 

 cal survey of Massachusetts, executed jointly by 

 the U, S. geological survey and the state, was the 

 map of the Greylock-Williamstown-North Adams 

 district, issued last summer by the Appalachian 

 mountain club on the scale of the original plane- 

 table sheets (1 : 30,000), and of which mention has 

 been made in Science. The same district is now 

 published in its official form, on a scale of an inch 

 to a mile (1 : 62,500), with brown contours every 

 twenty feet, blue water-courses, and black roads, 

 towns, and lettering. Old Greylock makes a fine 

 centre for the sheet, and its sharply moulded form 



is well displayed in the crowded contours on its 

 steeper slopes. The curious ' Hopper,' with its 

 deep-cut outlet valley opening to the west, is one 

 of the best-marked topographic forms in the state. 

 There ought to be found here a nocturnal wind- 

 stream as distinct as the water-stream that flows 

 from so well-developed a drainage surface ; for 

 on calm clear nights, as the air near the ground 

 cools by conduction to the radiating earth, it be- 

 comes heavy, and, if resting on an inclined sur- 

 face, tends to flow down it ; if a large surface 

 lead downward to a narrow valley exit, like that 

 from the Hopper, a distinct mountain breeze 

 should be felt at the mouth. This should be 

 studied and defined, so that our teachers need not 

 go abroad to Switzerland, or even so far away as 

 the Cordilleras of the west, to find illu?tration of 

 phenomena that are doubtless distinct enough near 

 home. 



The deep valley separating Greylock from the 

 Hoosac range is included in this sheet almost to 

 the head of its stream, the Hoosic, a little south 

 of the village of Berkshire. From the low pass 

 that leads southward to the Housatonic valley, 

 the Hoosic runs north before turning at North 

 Adams westward to Williamstown, and therefore 

 presents an example of that class of streams that 

 suffered obstruction in the latter stages of the 

 glacial period ; for, when the southern marginal 

 remnants of the ice-sheet lay in the deeper valleys, 

 they blockaded the streams that ran towards 

 them, and flooded them into lakes that commonly 

 rose until they overflowed backwards across their 

 divides to the south. Glen Roy in Scotland, with 

 its ' parallel roads,' is a famous example of the 

 kind ; the Red River valley of Minnesota and 

 Dakota is a very large illustration of essentially 

 the same type ; the northward-flowing Conloocook 

 in New Hampshire has been obstructed in the 

 same way, according to Upham ; but not a single 

 example of a valley thus modified has yet been 

 described in Massachusetts. It is time that the 

 many examples which undoubtedly exist should 

 be brought to light, that they may contribute 

 their share to the proper foundation of geographic 

 study. Enough has been done in the broad, 

 vague way of distant continental homologies : 

 what is now needed is the local examination of 

 minute topographic details, so that we may learn 

 to see and appreciate the forms about us at home ; 

 and nothing will lead sooner or surer to this long-de- 

 layed end than the publication of good topographic 



