334 



sciujsrcu. 



[Vol. IX., No. 218 



needed first to be determined upon, after careful 

 experimental work. This whole matter was there- 

 fore, in 1885, committed to the hands of Professor 

 Mendenhall. 



Perhaps the most important item in internal ad- 

 ministration, so far as it affects the permanent 

 scientific value of the office- work, was the effort, 

 heartily furthered by General Hazen, to improve 

 the accuracy and international comparability of 

 our instrumental equipment. The standards of the 

 International bureau of weights and measures 

 were recognized by him as being the proper legal 

 standards for this office, and every effort was 

 made to determine the corrections needed to re- 

 duce the past as well as the current meteorologi- 

 cal observations of the signal service to agree 

 therewith. 



Perhaps the generous breadth of General Ha- 

 zen's views, the absence of injurious jealousies, 

 and his confidence in the principle that the weath- 

 er-bureau would be strengthened by the widest 

 diffusion of an intelligent appreciation of meteor- 

 ology, are in nothing more clearly shown than in 

 the eainestness with which he stimulated the for- 

 mation of state weather-services, and encouraged 

 the study of meteorology in every school and col- 

 lege. He was painfully impressed by the dis- 

 astrous influence upon individuals and business of 

 the wide-spread and utterly absurd predictions of 

 the storms and weather of the 9th of March, 1884, 

 which emanated from Mr.Vennor, and were distrib- 

 uted broadcast tlirough the country. He saw clearly 

 that all this harm could be prevented only by in- 

 creasing the intelligence of the people in scientific 

 matters, and heartily indorsed every effort to dif- 

 fuse a more correct idea as to what constituted 

 legitimate meteorology. 



Although his duties demanded the maintenance 

 of a great central office at Washington, yet Gen- 

 eral Hazen realized that centralization could easily 

 be carried too far in scientific matters, and would 

 thus react injuriously upon the work of his office. 

 He was desirous of rapid progress in all directions, 

 and, to secure this, welcomed every prospect of 

 co-operation with other institutions as well as with 

 individuals. One of his first acts was the request 

 for co-operation on the part of the National acad- 

 emy of sciences. He improved the of)portunity to 

 help Professor Langley in the determination of 

 the absorbing-power of the atmosphere ; he ac- 

 cepted Professor King's offer to carry observers on 

 his balloon voyages ; he heartily furthered Lieu- 

 tenant Greely's efforts to maintain an international 

 polar station, and joined with the coast survey in 

 establishing a similar station, under Lieutenant 

 Ray, at the northern point of Alaska ; he co-oper- 

 ated with the bureau of navigation in securing 



weather-reports from the ocean ; he powerfully 

 assisted the metrological society in its labors for 

 the reformation of our complicated system of 

 local times, the result of which was the adoption 

 by the country of the present simple system of 

 standard meridians one hour apart. 



Equally successful was he in his efforts to co- 

 operate in various methods of disseminating and 

 utilizing the knowledge obtained by the weather- 

 bureau for the benefit of the business interests of 

 the country. With the telegraph companies he 

 published the daily telegraph bulletin. Through 

 the railroad companies he displayed the railroad 

 train signals, visible to every farmer along the 

 railroads. With local boards of trade and other 

 business interests he elaborated our system of 

 flood- warnings in the river- valleys. 



General Hazen was especially clear in his views 

 as to the importance of giving personal credit to 

 each man for his own personal work. Routine 

 work was credited to the assistants in charge, and 

 not to the impersonal office. Having assigned a 

 special work to the best man available, he took 

 pains to give him the credit, and make him per- 

 sonally responsible for its success, thus securing 

 more enthusiasm in the work. 



This notice of a few prominent features in the 

 intense activity of General Hazen's life seems 

 eulogistic rather than histoi'ical ; but, to the con- 

 trary, the fact is, that military life rarely offers 

 a position that requires the promotion of any 

 special science, and still more rarely do official or 

 military circles present an officer who so thor- 

 oughly desired, as far as allowable, to relax strin- 

 gent military law, and liberally interpret cumber- 

 some official regulations, so that scientific men 

 might successfully promote their special work. 



Cleveland Abbe. 



ETHNOLOGICAL NOTES. 

 The Proceedings of the U. S. national museum, 

 for 1886, contain a paper by George H. Boehmer 

 on Norsk naval architecture. He compares the 

 modern Northland boat, which is in use along the 

 coast of Norway, round the North Cape to the 

 frontier of Russia, with the ancient Norsk boat. 

 In this boat he recognizes the oldest formsknown. 

 These are known from the rock sculptures discov- 

 ered in Sweden and Norway, which are supposed 

 to have been made from five to eight hundred years 

 before the Christian era ; from boat-shaped stone 

 burial-groups, supposed to have been erected during 

 the transition time from the bronze period to the 

 iron age, in Scandinavia ; and from boat-remains. 

 The boat is long, narrow, and low. with stem and 

 stern posts alike, both being curved and high. 

 The row^locks of these boats hear an oblique pro- 



