158 Lieut. Maury's Plan for Improving Navigation. 



States, so that the united labours of the two greatest naval 

 and commercial nations of the world may be combined, with 

 the least practicable delay, in promoting the interests of 

 navigation." 



However, the Dutch have in this instance been beforehand 

 with us ; they have already adopted Maury's plan. The ex- 

 penses will be really trifling in comparison to the great 

 results to be obtained. Some thermometers must be bought 

 and supplied to ships, and officers must be placed in charge 

 of a separate department of hydrography, whose constant 

 duty it will be to collate all the materials sent in, and con- 

 struct new charts, and that department must be placed in 

 communication with the hydrographical department of the 

 United States. But if I do not take too sanguine a view of 

 the matter, it really seems to me that this expenditure will 

 bear an almost indefinitely small ratio to the benefits likely' 

 to be realised to navigation alone. But this is a small part 

 of the total amount of advantages — the benefits that are 

 likely to flow from having a numerous host of observers 

 making meteorological observations continually night and 

 day, over all the parts of the globe covered with water, which 

 are nearly three-fourths of its surface, and which before 

 supplied no materials to the common stock of science, can 

 scarcely be over-estimated. There is no subject which is 

 more perplexing than the science of the weather ; the pheno- 

 mena are so various and so complex that at one time 

 philosophers despaired of eliminating any general laws ; but 

 the prospect is now brighter ; a vast step has been made by 

 the invention of self-registering instruments, the beautiful 

 applications of electricity to that object, and by the esta- 

 blishment of numerous magnetic observatories, at all of 

 which meteorological observations are made. But the sea 

 may be described as the spot on which all the phenomena 

 are in their most regular and normal state, uninterrupted 

 by casual causes, such as unduly heated surfaces, mountain 

 ranges, and so forth. " The sea," says Maury, " is the field 

 for observing the operations of the general laws which 

 govern the circulation of the atmosphere. Observations on 

 land enable us to discover the exceptions, but from the sea 



