58 
Remarks on the recent Conference at Vienna on 
supply of such and such a district ? — the only answer an honest 
man can give is that he does not know. 
Nevertheless, such questions as these are persistently pressed 
upon the notice of every meteorological official over the whole 
world ; and on the continent of Europe, where agriculture and 
forestry are the especial care of the State, the complaint that 
meteorology does not help the farmers as much as she ought to 
do has been loudly and generally expressed. 
The practical applications of the science are daily becoming 
more and more prominent, more especially with regard to 
weather forecasting; and accordingly, at the International Statis- 
tical Congress at Pesth, in 1876, the following resolutions were 
adopted : — 
1. The Congress recommends to the Governments of all countries to 
institute special observations relative to a'j;ncultural meteorology, to be 
afterwards centralised, discussed, and regularly published by the Govern- 
ments or scientific establishments. 
2. The Congress requests the Governments to cause their agents (crop- 
reporters) to send to tliem monthly reports on the state of vegetation of the 
cereals in their districts. 
3. The Congress recommends the Governments to institute observations 
with the object of ascertaining the influence on climate of the destruction of 
forests, and of planting trees. 
4. The Congress expresses the wish that observations relating to thunder- 
storms, hail, as well as periodical phenomena respecting plants and animals, 
may be taken at the greatest possible number of points in each country, 
and that the results of these observations be centralised, co-ordinated, and 
published. 
5. The Congress expresses the wish that a certain number of meteorological 
observatories should establisli international telegraphic communications 
between themselves, in order to transmit to each other observations, with 
the view of the establishment of weather forecasts, for the benefit of agri- 
culture and commerce. It requests tliat these observations may be, as far as 
possible, immediately brought to the knowledge of the crop-reporters and 
distributed among tlie public, especially with the object of preventing the 
effects of frosts, floods, &c. 
The idea of an international exchange of crop-reports had 
been propounded at an earlier period by Maury, in an address 
to the National Agricultural Congress at St. Louis, May 1872, 
but his proposal was more in the interest of corn-merchants 
than of farmers. 
The Pesth resolutions merely expressed a general desire that 
the subject of agricultural meteorology should receive attention, 
and they were accordingly brought before the Meteorological 
Congress in Rome at Easter, 1879, which included in its pro- 
gramme the following question : — 
" How can the development of meteorology in connection 
with agriculture and forestry be forwarded by the Congress?" 
