SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
21 
KETEOEOLOGY FOE THE FASMEES, 
BY LIEUT. MAURY. U. S. N'. 
Orservvtory, Washingron, June 18, 1855. 
Tb fkj^ Editors of the Amcricav. Farmer : 
Gentlemen— 1 am much obliged to you for your favor 
■of the 9th inst. You are right — I did not intend to con- 
fine the. appeal to the farmers of any “pent-up-Utica.” I 
intend to make it as broad as the land. 
You a.sk for the plan of co-operation. It is very simple, 
and calls on the farmers for little more than good will. 
I first want authority to take the preliminary steps, and 
to confer with other meteorologists and men of science at 
home and abroad, v.ith the view of establishing a uniform 
system of meteorological observations for the land, as we 
have done for the sea. 
If any officer of the government were authorized to say 
to the farmers, as I have said to the sailors, here is the 
form ofa meteorological journal; it shows you the obser- 
vations that are wanted, the hours at which they are to be 
made; tells wliat instruments are required, and how they 
are to be used ; take it, furnish the government with the 
observaiions, and, in return, the government will discuss 
them and gi /e you a copy of the I'esults when published 
— he would have at once and without cost a volunteer 
■corps of observers that would furnish him with all the 
data requisite fora complete study of both agricultural and 
sanimry meteorology. 
Such .an offer to the sailors, has enlisted a corps of ob- 
servers for the sea, by whose co-operation results the 
most important and valuable, and as unexpected as valu- 
able, have been obtained. 
Could not, at least, one farmer be found on the average 
for every county in every State that would gladly under- 
take the observations'? I don't think there would be any 
diificuity on that score. Sailors have been found to do as 
much for every part of the sea — on the average ten obser- 
vers for a State would be sufficient. 
Xow, if we could get the English government, and the 
French government, and the Russian government and the 
other Christian States, both of the Old World and the 
New, to do the same by their farmers, we shall have the 
whole surface of our planet covered with meteorological 
observers acting in concert, and eliciting from nature 
under all varieties of climate and circumstance, answers 
to the same questions, and that, too, at no other expense 
than what each government should choose to incur for the 
discussion and publication of the observations that are 
made by its own citizens or subjects. 
Wl.ai is wanted in a system of observations like this, is 
uriu'orinity. Hence, co-operation — an agreement to ob- 
serve the same things at the same limes — is essential to 
any vhing like success. We want not only corresponding 
• observations as to the time, but we want them made with 
instruments that are alike, or that can be compared ; and 
then we may expect to find out something certain and 
vahiable, concerning the movements of this grand and 
beautilul machine called the atmosphere. 
^-uppo.se a pretentious fly should place itself upon a 
steam engine, and from its own little, narrow contracted 
field of observations, attempt to expound the stimcture of 
the entire machine. If it had the intelligence, both to ob- 
serve and to reason it would not find itself more bewilder- 
ed than any one does and must, who, from an isolated 
series of meteorological observations, attempts to learn the 
laws which govern the atmosphere and regulates climates. 
If you ask me to slate beforehand what particular dis- 
■ coveries or special results of value I expect to makel I 
answer, If 1 could tell I would not ask your assistance to 
make them. The fields meteorological are large — there 
are many of them, and all that Ido know about them is, 
that there is in them migWj harvests of many sorts. 
I Some years ago I commenced such a system for the sea, 
I as I am now advocating — and as I now both see and feel 
I the necessity of — for the land. After we had been at work 
I a little while and began to gather in a harvest of useful 
results by discovering new truths and facts, Congress 
i authorized the Secretary of the Navy to employ three 
' small vessels of the Navy, to assist me in perfecting these 
discoveries, and pushing forward investigations. 
Now, you would have said, what two things can be 
I move remote than maps to show which way the winds 
blow, and a sub-marine telegraph across the Atlantic 'I 
: Yet it seems that they are closely connected, for researches 
‘ undertaken for the one are found to bear directly upon 
! the other. Among the early fruits gathered by pursuing 
i our discoveries, even with the slender means afforded by 
! Congress — for the Secretary was authorized to let me 
j have these three small vessels only in case they should 
I cost nothing — there is a promise of a submarine telegraph 
j across the Atlantic. 
j We are told by the public prints that a company has 
been formed for the purpose, the money raised, contracts 
I made, and the cable that is to hold the v/ires and span. 
I the ocean commenced to be made. 1 have a piece of it 
' now on the table before me. 
[ One of the results of getting the wires across, will be to 
place the farmers with their provision markets and pro- 
duce exactly half the distance in time — and time now 
seems to be the only true measure of distance — from 
Europe that they now are. Let us illustrate the value in 
one respect only of this telegrapli to the farmers : a de- 
mand springs up in England for breadstufis, for instance. 
The news must now wait for the steamer to sail before it 
is ready to come, and by the time she reaches our shores 
and the produce can be sent forward, the chief granaries 
of Europe have been ransacked, and the American dealer 
finds himself too lato in the market. 
But when that telegraphic plateau, which we have dis- 
covered in the Atlantic, shall be threaded with the mag- 
netic cable, the intelligence will be known in New York, 
Cincinnati, St Louis and New Orleans as soon as it is in 
Liverpool. Straightway the produce is put in motion, 
and instead of coming in “the day after the fair,” as is 
now too often the case, it will arrive with the young of 
the flood that comes rolling in from the East to meet the 
demand. By this achievement, or by the achievement* 
which these investigations at sea have already accom- 
plished in the shortening of voyages and saving of time, 
who have been the greater gainers, the farmers or the mer- 
chants'? 
Storms on land have a beginning and an end ; that is. 
they commence at one place, and frequently, after several 
days travel, end at some other ; at least so it is held. What 
would it be worth to the farmer, or the merchant, or to 
any body, if he could know, with something like certain- 
ty, the kind ofvr'eather he might always expect one, two, 
three or more days ahead '? 
I think it not at all unlikely that such, to some extent at 
least, would be among the first fruits of this system of ob- 
servations that I am proposing. 
Certain of the observers scattered over all parts of the 
country, would probaii^ly be required to make daily re- 
ports to the central office at Washington as to the weather 
each for his own station — say at 9 A. M, This would 
soon enable us to determine the laws of progress as well 
as the march of the various states of weather, such as 
gales, rains, snow storms and the like ; so that knowing in 
what part of the country a storm had arisen, we should — 
learning through the telegraph the direction it might take 
—be enabled to calculate its rate of travel, and to predict, 
within a few hours the time it would arrive at different 
places on its line of march ; and knowing these, the tele- 
graphic agency which the newspaper press of the coua- 
