SCIENCE. 



FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1885. 



COMMENT AND CRITICISM. 

 The school of instruction of the signal service 

 at Fort Myer has been the scene of occurrences 

 which show in a strong light the incongruity of 

 having the weather service under mihtary control. 

 Some years since, General Hazen made known his 

 desu'e to have educated young men, especially col- 

 lege graduates, enter the signal service as privates ; 

 and, under the promise of good treatment, he 

 seems to have been quite successful in recruiting 

 his corps from this class. The recruits are, how- 

 ever, required to learn the drill and duties of the 

 common soldier. In this branch of their educa- 

 tion, the class now under instruction proved so 

 inapt that the driU-officer lost his patience and 

 his temper, and expressed his sentiments in lan- 

 guage unfit for ears more polite than those of the 

 mules on the plains. The aggrieved young men 

 wrote a letter of complaint to the chief signal 

 officer, and for this offence they were promptly 

 brought before a court-martial. The trial has been 

 concluded, but the result has not yet been made 

 known. 



The case is instructive as showing the wide 

 divergence between mUitary discipline and com- 

 mon sense. While the young men were tried by 

 court-martial, the officer whose ungentlemanly 

 conduct caused the trouble was let off by what 

 General Hazen is pleased to call a reprimand, but 

 which was nothing more than a letter calling his 

 attention to a certain paragraph in the army regu- 

 lations. We can hardly suppose that this letter 

 would seriously disturb the equanimity of an offi- 

 cer of the breeding indicated by the language of 

 the offending heutenant. Common sense would 

 have dictated the trial of the officer by court- 

 martial, and the reprimand of the men whose 

 offence, as General Hazen himself says, was only 

 that of going about a right act in a wrong way. 

 We may admit that the chief signal officer knows 

 best how so purely technical an offence against 

 military discipline should be dealt with in army 

 practice ; but this only emphasizes the deviation 

 of that practice from common sense when applied 

 to a civil service like that of the weather bureau. 

 No. 144.-1885. 



In the annual report of the chief signal 

 officer, just issued, it is claimed that meteorological 

 work depends upon an accurate and continuous 

 record, and that to get these conditions the ob- 

 servers must be held with an absolute control, 

 which makes a military organization indispensa- 

 ble. It is further stated that the gathering of 

 these observations is traditionally military work, 

 and that " all that is of much value has been 

 done under some form of military organization." 

 While not wishing to disparage the faithfulness of 

 the meteorological records of our own army sur- 

 geons, which are referred to as among the 

 earliest, we think it must be acknowledged that 

 the aimless records of temperature and barometric 

 pressure of the past were made by those ha\'ing 

 much spare time upon their hands, whether 

 surgeons at army posts or civilians. But mete- 

 orology is not a mere question of gathering 

 records of observations. These records must 

 be discussed, and the truths hidden in these 

 masses of figures must be revealed, before any 

 true science exists. We find that this need is 

 recognized by the Army sig-nal service, and that 

 Professors Ferrel, Abbe, Trowbridge, Row- 

 land, Pickering, Mendenhall, Wright, not to men- 

 tion other younger men, and aU civihans, have 

 been employed as a ' study division ' to improve 

 the methods of taking observations and the in- 

 struments used, to prepare text-books on meteor- 

 ology and meteorological instruments for the use 

 of the service ; in fact, to direct the whole work 

 of the bureau. We do not forget the officers of 

 the army who have done good work for the ser- 

 vice and for science, but merely wish to call atten- 

 tion once more to the fact that the proportion 

 of men fitted to conduct scientific work is small, 

 and no larger among army officers than among 

 civilians. There is, moreover, no evident con- 

 nection between predicting the coming of a killing 

 frost which will destroy the last of a growing cot- 

 ton crop, a matter treated of in the latter part of 

 the report, and skill in laying a field telegraph 

 line, military signalling or drill, to which are de- 

 voted the opening pages. It is inevitable that the 

 larger portion of the leaders of the service must be 

 civilians. The work of the service is done for the 

 benefit of commerce and agricultui'e, and it is in- 



