THE METEOROLOGY OF THE FUTURE 25 



that he is capable of. He may temporarily devote h im self to acquiring 

 knowledge or money; to perfecting art or inventing machinery; he may 

 apparently devote his whole life to some mercantile pursuit, but if he 

 be true to his own conscience, his ultimate hope must be to benefit his 

 country and mankind. Anything else less than this dies; just as he 

 himself must die; it dies with him. Patriotic philanthropy can alone 

 afford a man the comfortable assurance that his life has been well spent. 

 No one founds a hospital, a library, a museum, a park or a university, 

 for purely selfish ends; he knows, and he takes pleasure in knowing, 

 that the whole community will be benefited, and that future thousands 

 will thank him for that which otherwise would have been unattainable 

 to them. He has given to his money and his life their maximum 

 power for good. 



At this moment Columbia University surrounds us with this group 

 of noble buildings, testifying to the wisdom of many wealthy men. The 

 names of the best of New York are inscribed above these portals. There 

 is room for other temples and why should not one of these be devoted 

 to the science and the art that I represent, to the study of the atmos- 

 phere, and the utilization of that knowledge for the benefit of man? 

 Give meteorology a home of its own among these temples of science, 

 and its students will build a noble intellectual structure. Provide 

 generous fellowships, stimulate able physicists to devote their lives to 

 this study, and thus assure the development of useful meteorolgy by 

 future generations of men. 



But is there a future for meteorology ? Can we to-night lift the 

 curtain and look forward? What are the problems that now seem to 

 be pressing for solution ? The great problems of the past were vital to 

 the progress of science and to the welfare of mankind. Some of these 

 problems still await our careful attention, and other newer ones have 

 become prominent. This present generation of men must provide for 

 this future study. We understand the general nature of the work that 

 remains to be done, but a future generation must do it. It is our first 

 duty to provide for the education of the young men that are to carry 

 the work a few steps further forward. Progress in knowledge is always 

 slow. How slowly Africa has been opened up. How hard it was to 

 find the North Pole. How long the world waited for Christopher 

 Columbus to cross the Atlantic. 



With the kind assistance of Professor Wm. Hallock and his col- 

 leagues I have prepared a few experiments to illustrate the points to 

 which I would draw your attention. But first I must emphasize my 

 statement that as soon as one generation of men arrives at a simple law 

 or generalization, then another generation calls attention to the fact 

 that there are exceptions to these laws and that obscure influences are 

 at work preventing the operation of any one single, simple law. Thus 



