Whitney as Site for Meteorological Observatory. 97 



King, then in New York, learned that the peak which he 

 had cUmbed in 1871, now known as Sheep Mountain, Old 

 Mt. Whitney, and Mt. Corcoran (Bierstadt), lying to 

 the south of Whitney, was not Mt. Whitney, and hasten- 

 ing West climbed the right peak September 19, 1873. On 

 September 6, 1873, the mountain was climbed by Carl 

 Rabe, and the first mercurial barometer (Green, No. 1554) 

 carried to the summit. Professor Langley's expedition 

 is well known. He reached Lone Pine on July 24, 1881, 

 and left on September loth by way of Lone Pine Cafion. 

 The journey, in brief, is described in pages 36 to 44, 

 Professional Paper No, 15, Signal Service, published in 

 1884. 



I cannot do better than quote Professor Langley's 



statement, given on page 44 : — 



" I do not think the Italian Government, in its observatory 

 on yEtna, the French in that of Puy de Dome, or any other 

 nation at any other occupied station, has a finer site for such 

 a purpose than the United States possesses in Whitney and its 

 neighboring peaks; and it is most earnestly to be hoped that 

 something more than a mere ordinary meteorological station 

 will be finally erected here and that the almost unequaled ad- 

 vantages of this site will be developed by the Government." 



COMPUTATION OF THE ALTITUDE OF MT. WHITNEY. 



(A report by Mr. H. L. Heiskell to Prof. F. H. Bigelow, dated Oct. 2, 1903.) 



Relative to the observations made on Mt. Whitney, 

 Cal., by Professor McAdie on July 8, 1903, at 10 a.m., ii 

 A.M., noon, and i p.m., and used by him in connection with 

 simultaneous observations taken at Independence, San 

 Francisco, and Mt. Tamalpais, to determine the height of 

 the summit, I find that the observations are too few, and 

 taken at a bad time of the day, to give any very accurate 

 results. 



