OBITUARY NOTICES. 
439 
for during more than a score of years he never had a case 
of insubordination or personal altercation. He collected 
the scattered results of the various reductions for nearly a 
thousand series of tidal observations into a single register, 
which has proved of great value to his successors. He de¬ 
veloped a number of new methods for discussing tides of 
different types, most of which were never published, and his 
inventive ability enabled him to greatly improve the auto¬ 
matic tide gauges used to secure continuous records of the 
tides. At the time he was made chief of division the Coast 
Survey had published only some general tables giving the 
elements for predicting tides at various places. He at once 
urged the preparation and annual publication of the pre¬ 
dicted tides a year in advance for the benefit of mariners. 
A volume of tide tables for the Atlantic coast of the United 
States for the year 1867 and another one for the Pacific coast 
for the same year were printed in 1866, only a year after he 
assumed charge of the tidal work. These tide tables gave 
the time and height of each high tide throughout the year 
1867 at all the principal ports of our eastern coast, and the 
time and height of both high and low tide was given for the 
western coast. They were the first tide tables of the kind 
ever issued by our Government and have been published 
regularly every year since then down to the present (1895), 
although somewhat enlarged of late years, and the predic¬ 
tions for the Atlantic coast also made to include the low as 
well as the high w r aters. He had the honor of being in 
charge of the tidal division when the harmonic analysis for 
tides was first introduced into this country. This method 
of treating tides seems to be chiefly due to Sir William 
Thomson, now Lord Kelvin, although Laplace had pre¬ 
viously discussed some of its principles. Prof. William 
Ferrel in this country and Prof. George H. Darwin in Eng¬ 
land made important modifications and brought it to the 
present degree of perfection, which renders it the most beau¬ 
tiful and satisfactory system for the analysis and prediction 
of tides ever invented. Before the invention of tide-predict- 
