30 General Sabine — Note on Meteorological Correspondence. [Mar. 8, 



organized systematic elimatological researches throughout their respective 

 States under the superintendence of men eminently qualified by theoretical 

 and practical knowledge, and whose previous publications had obtained for 

 them a general European reputation. The instruments employed in each 

 country had been constructed under the care of the Superintendents, and 

 the instructions for their use drawn up and published by them ; the obser- 

 vations were also received by them and reduced and coordinated, and were 

 in this state published periodically by the respective governments. To 

 call on countries so advanced in systematically conducted meteorological 

 observations to remodel their instructions and instruments with the view of 

 establishing uniformity in these respects, was scarcely hkely to be successful, 

 especially if the request proceeded from a country which ^had no similarly 

 organized system extending over its own area. Moreover the discussions 

 which had taken place at the Magnetical and Meteorological Congress 

 assembled at the Cambridge Meeting of the British Association in 1845, 

 which was attended by the Superintendents of the different continental 

 systems, had manifested so marked a disposition on the part of the meteo- 

 rologists of the different countries to adhere to their respective arrange- 

 ments in regard to instruments, times of observation, and modes of publi- 

 cation, as to produce a strong conviction that the suitable time for pressing 

 a proposal for the substitution of a uniform scheme, however advantageous 

 in some respects, had not then arrived. 



But in respect to Marine Meteorology the case was widely different ; and 

 the suggestions which the President and Council felt it their duty to offer 

 on that subject had a much more positive character, and were directed to 

 immediate action. An application had been made by the Government of 

 the United States to that of our own country to give a greater extension 

 and a more systematic direction to meteorological observations made at sea. 

 Apart from the important scientific bearing of such researches, the well- 

 known publications of Lieutenant Maury had given to the Government of 

 the United States a fair claim to make such an application to that of our 

 own country, to whose commercial interests a practical knowledge of the 

 meteorological statistics of the ocean was not less important than to those 

 of the United States. Accordingly, in their reply to the Foreign Office, 

 the President and Council did not fail to express emphatically their hope 

 that the application for cooperation, thus earnestly addressed by the Go- 

 vernment of the United States, might not be addressed in vain. 



The following extracts from a memoir addressed by Lieutenant Maury 

 to the Secretary of the United States Navy, printed in Papers presented 

 to the House of Lords by command of Her Majesty, pursuant to an address 

 dated February 21, 1853," will show that the suggestions thus made by the 

 President and Council, both in regard to Land and to Sea Meteorological 

 Observations, were fully concurred in by Lieutenant Maury, on his return 

 from an official mission to visit and report upon the meteorological esta- 



