Professor Elias Loomis, 445 



where the barometer stood ,--,, , 4 (T , ,';,. etc. above its normal 

 height. The deviations of the barometric pressure from the 

 normal were thus made prominent, and all other phenomena of 

 the storm wore regarded as related to those barometric lines. 

 A Beries of colors represented respectively the places where the 

 iky was clear, where the sky was overcast, and where rain or 

 snow was falling. A series of lines represented the places at 

 which the temperature was at the normal, or was 10 or 20 or 

 .'>'• degrees above the normal, or below the normal. Arrows 

 of proper direction and length represented the direction and 

 the intensity of the winds at the different stations. These suc- 



jsive maps for the three or four days of the storm furnished 

 to the eye all its phenomena in a simple and most effective 

 manner. 



You have no doubt, most of you, already recognized in this 

 description the charts, which to-day are so common, issued by 

 the United States Signal Service, and by weather service 

 Bnreans in other countries. The method seems so natural that 

 it should occur to any person who lias the subject of a storm 

 under consideration. But the greatest inventions are ofttimes 

 the simplest, and I am inclined to believe that the introduction 

 of this single method of representing and discussing the phe- 

 jiomena of a storm was the greatest of the services which our 

 colleague rendered to science. This method, is at the foun- 

 dation of what is sometimes called " the new meteorology," and 

 the paper which contains its first presentation stands forth, I 

 am convinced, as the most important paper in the history of 

 that science. I regret that I cannot aid my memory by 

 (Rioting the exact words, but I remember distinctly what 

 seemed to me an almost despairing expression made many years 

 ago by one who had high responsibility in the matter of mete- 

 orological work, as he looked out upon the confused mass of 

 observations already made, and felt unable to say in what 

 direction progress was to be expected. With this I contrast 

 the buoyant expressions of another officer charged with like 

 responsibility, as he showed me, one or two decades later 

 (in l s »i ( .t). charts constructed like those of Professor Loomis, 

 and said, "I care not for the mass of observations made in the 

 UHial form. What I want is the power and the material for 



