28 Professor Cleveland Abbe, M.A. [Jan. 2$. 



organization of the office. Long before the maps can reach the people 

 our predictions have been sent by telegraph to every part of the- 

 Union ; they have been printed by enterprising newspapers, they have- 

 been bulletined at public places, such as telegraph and railroad 

 offices and Chambers of Commerce ; by means of signals, usually flags,, 

 the approach of storms, rain, blizzards, local and northern, have 

 been announced ; finally, the early morning railroad trains have displayed 

 on the sides of the luggage vans signals embodying the midnight 

 predictions, so that any farmer watching the train as it flies by in the 

 gray dawn is put in possession of as much knowledge of the coming / 

 weather changes as we can send him from Washington. 



All this organized effort to observe, concentrate, predict, and dissem- 

 inate useful information about the weather employs the whole time of 

 some 500 or 600 Government employes, and enlists the voluntary 

 co-operation of thousands more. The expense or rather the outlay on 

 the part of the people is not merely the one or two hundred thousand 

 pounds sterling that is appropriated by Congress, but the vastly larger 

 sum total of all that is done by the many friends of the service, and we 

 think there is no shadow of doubt but that every fair-minded citizen 

 concedes that it pays him to heed the weather predictions. We have, , 

 of course, many cases where spasmodic attention to them disappoints 

 the farmer, the shipper, the railroad superintendent, the sea captain or 

 others ; but opposed to these few is an innumerable majority who 

 uphold our work and testify in the most convincing figures that health, - 

 property, and business enterprises prosper in proportion as they study, 

 understand and heed the predictions. It is perfectly plausible that 

 this should be their conclusion, for I calculate that without our reports, 

 one can in the United States predict the weather for the coming day 

 for his own locality correctly about 65 times out of 100, but with the 

 predictions certainly 85 times ; we have therefore helped him 20 per 

 cent, towards a perfect fore-knowledge, and on the average of the year 

 he should be 20 per cent, better off in all his affairs. Such a gain fully 

 justifies the expense of the signal service, and in general this percentage 

 represents the ratio by which science enables civilised races to annually 

 forge ahead of those nations that neglect the advantages that know- 

 ledge offers to mankind. It does not pay to be left behind in the race 

 of progress. 



I cannot close without showing you these daily maps of the weather 

 in South Africa. 



I was about to prepare some such maps in order to illustrate to you 

 the weather and clouds that I have been observing here during the 

 last week, and was wishing for maps to illustrate your winter weather 

 when to my delight I made the acquaintance of one of the most per- 

 sistent students of meteorology that is anywhere to be fouud, your 



