Professor Elias Loom is. 449 



This treatise, notwithstanding the rapid advances of the science 

 during more than twenty years, is still indispensable to the 

 student of meteorology. 



The better system of observing, for which Professor Loomis 

 had been long waiting, came when the United States Signal 



rvice was established in L871. The daily maps of the 

 weather published by the Bureau were constructed essentially 

 after the plan which Professor Loomis had, thirty years before, 

 invented for the treatment of the storms of 1842. As soon as 

 these maps had been been published for the two years 1872 

 and 1^7:>, Professor Loomis commenced in earnest to deduce 

 from them the lessons which they taught us respecting the 

 nature and the phenomena of United States storms. To this 

 investigation he gave nearly all his energies during the remain- 

 ing fifteen years of his life. 



For several years he employed and paid for the services of 



ustants whose time was given to the preparation of material 

 for use in his studies. The aggregate cost of this assistance 

 was oi itself a very large contribution to science. Beginning 

 in April, 1874, he presented regularly at eighteen successive 

 meetings of the National Academy of Sciences in April and 

 in October of each year, a paper entitled " Contributions to 

 Meteorology." These were at first based upon the publica- 

 tions of the Signal Service alone, but as years went by like 

 publications appeared in Europe that were useful for his work. 

 These papers were published in July and January following 

 the Academy meeting, and they regularly formed the first and 

 leading article in eighteen successive volumes of the American 

 Journal of Science. Gradually, one after another of his col- 

 lege duties were committed to others that he might give his 

 whole strength to these investigations. 



An attack of malaria interrupted the regularity of the 

 series. His advancing years and diminishing strength warned 

 him that the end of his investigations could not be far distant. 

 The number of hours in which he could work each day w r as 

 slowly diminishing. Five more papers followed at somewhat 

 less regular intervals. 



In 18S4 he began a revision of the whole series of papers. 

 They had been presented without much regard to systematic 



