PROFESSOR ESPY. 313 
^filled and Espy himself was as overcome as a child. Before New York would let 
him go he delivered nine courses of lectures ; went thence to Boston, where he 
gave six, and then made the tour of the Union and $25,000 besides. 
Soon afterwards he sailed for Europe. Not long after reaching Liverpool, 
January 6, 1839, a great storm occurred. He went to Lloyds, consulted the 
newspapers as they arrived noted the direction of the wind as given at the differ- 
ent places, and from these data constructed the first great storm-map ever pre- 
pared, with the hour-points marked. Every line and curve and point exemplified 
his theory. He was at no loss now for audiences. He appeared before the 
British Association of Scientists, at London, at which Sir John Herschel was 
present, an interested auditor. He crossed the Channel to Paris, and the Acad- 
emy of Sciences appointed a committee, composed of the illustrious Arago, with 
whom were joined Messrs. Pouillet and Babinet, "to report upon the observa- 
tions and theory of Mr. Espy, which have for their object the aerial meteors, 
known by the names of storms, water-spouts, and tornadoes, which occur in the 
vicinity of the Gulf of Mexico; storms, however, which are produced in every 
tpart of the globe when a few given conditions concur in one place." 
The length of the Arago report indicates the strong hold which Espy's start- 
ling and conclusive array of facts had made upon the minds of the members of 
the Academy, and also evinces the care with which the committee studied the 
subject from its scientific standpoint. The effect of the report, when it reached 
Washington, was not much different from that which followed, afterwards, the 
announcement of Morse's first transmitted message over the wire from Washing- 
ton to Baltimore. 
In due time Prof. Espy returned to the capital of his own country, and one 
of the first public men he encountered was Senator Preston. They met on Penn- 
sylvania Avenue. Towards the conclusion of their report, M. Arago's committee 
had expressed the hope that the Government of the United States would place 
Mr. Espy in a position to continue his important investigations and complete his 
Temarkable theory by means of all the observations and all the experiments which 
-even the deductions of this theory may suggest in a vast country, the home, as it 
-were, of the aerial meteors, storms, water-spouts and tornadoes. Senator Preston 
was prompt to apologize for she mistake he had made when his language drove 
Espy from the Senate gallery, and he was as profuse in his promise to help the 
storm-king onward in the spirit of the French report. It is a matter of history 
that he did so j that Espy got his $25,000, and that to him we owe the first step 
.in the formation of the present Signal Service. — Philadelphia Press. 
