So happily, in this instance, did theory (too often despised) blend with fact, that the French War Minister said, "It appears that, by the aid of the electric telegraph and barometric observations, we may be apprised several hours or several days of great atmospheric disturbances, happening at the distance of 1000 or 1500 leagues."

[EDITOR'S NOTE.-So far as we have been able to learn, the first idea of making use of the telegraph for conveying information in regard to the weather, with a view of anticipating changes at any point, occurred to Professor Henry, the eminent secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, in the year 1847, as in the report of the Institution for that year, page 190 (presented to Congress on the 6th of January, 1848), we find the following paragraph:

Less than three years after the occurrence of the famous "Black Sea storm," just mentioned, there appeared for the first time, and in an American paper, a formal proposition for the establishment of a general system of daily weather reports by telegraph, and the utilization of that great invention for the collection of meteorologic changes at a central office, and the transmission thence of storm warnings to the sea-ports of the American lakes and our Atlantic sea-board.

"Since great storms," says Mr. Thomas B. Butler, in his work on the "Atmospheric System and Elements of Prognostication," "have been found to observe pretty well defined laws, both as respects the motions of the wind and the di"The present time appears to be peculiarly auspi-rection of their progress, we may often recogcious for commencing an enterprise of the proposed nize such a storm in its progress, and anticipate tered over every part of the southern and western por- changes which may succeed during the next tion of North America, and the extended lines of tele- few hours. When it is possible to obtain telgraph will furnish a ready means of warning the more egraphic reports of the weather from several northern and eastern observers to be on the look-out places in the valley of the Mississippi and its tributaries, we may often predict the approach of a great storm twenty-four hours before its violence is felt at New York."

kind. The citizens of the United States are now scat

for the first appearance of an advancing storm.”

Additional references to this subject were made in the reports of 1848 and 1849, in the latter of which we are informed that "successful applications have been made to the presidents of a number of telegraph lines to allow, at a certain period of the day, the use of their wires for the transmission of meteorological intelligence." Although subsequent reports referred to the intention of the Institution to organize a telegraphic department for its meteorological observations, it was not until 1856, as far as we can ascertain, that observations were actually collected and posted. In the report for 1857 we find that "the Institution is indebted to the national telegraph lines for a series of observations from New Orleans to New York, and as far westward as Cincinnati, which were published in the Even

ing Star."

In the report of 1858 it is announced that "an object of much interest at the Smithsonian building is the daily exhibition, on a large map, of the condition of the weather over a considerable portion of the United States. The reports are received about ten o'clock in the morning, and the changes on the maps are made by temporarily attaching to the several stations pieces of card of different colors, to denote different conditions of the weather as to clearness, cloudiness, rain, or snow. This map is not only of interest to visitors in exhibiting the kind of weather which their friends at a distance are experiencing, but is also of importance in determining at a glance the probable changes which may soon be expected."

The report for 1859 contains a list of thirty-nine stations from which daily weather dispatches are received, and the report for 1860 refers to forty-five stations. In the report for 1861 Professor Henry announces that the system has been temporarily discontinued in consequence of the monopoly of the wires by the military department, and in 1862 it seems to have been again resumed.

It is very evident that to our own country belongs the credit of first initiating and carrying into successful operation the systematic use of the telegraph for the above-mentioned object.

On the coasts of the kingdom of Italy mariners are forewarned that a storm threatens them by a red flag hoisted on all the towers and light-houses of the principal localities, ranging from Genoa to Palermo, and thence up along the Adriatic. On the most dangerous points of the coast of England, where the fishingboats and small craft that perform the service of the coast are exposed to formidable gales even during the most promising season, barometers put up by the Meteorological Bureau are at hand to warn the seamen of bad weather. A striking illustration of the importance of storm weather signals was recently furnished (March 8), when a tornado swept over St. our ports, and the industrial pursuits of the country generally-of that system of meteorological co-operation and research which had been so signally beneficial to commerce and navigation at sea. The Brussels Conference indorsed this recommendation. Much stress, in these appeals to Congress and the people, has been laid upon the value of the magnetic telegraph as a meteorological implement; for it was held that by a properly managed system of daily weather reports by telegraph warnings of many, if not most, of the destructive storms which visit our shores or sweep over the land might be given sufficiently in advance to prevent shipwreck, with many other losses, disasters, and inconveniences to both man and beast."-(Page 6.) The same journal states that the Meteorological Department of the London Board of Trade, under Admiral Fitzroy, was established to co-operate with the suggestion of Lieutenant Maury, which statement is confirmed by the report of the English Board for 1866 (page 17), and also by Admiral Fitzroy himself, in his Weather-Book, where he tells (page 49), "from personal knowledge, how coldly Maury's views and suggestions were received in this country [England] prior to 1853." The great meteorologist, Alexander Buchan, secretary of the Scottish Meteorological So

In the year 1857 Lieutenant M. F. Maury, then Superintendent of the National Observatory at Washington, appealed to the public and Congress, through the press, urging the establishment of a storm and weather burean, and at the same time made an extensive tour through the Northwest, addressing the people with a view of rousing public attention to the vast impor-ciety, in his recent work, strikingly states the indebttance of this meteorological system.

In the Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society for 1860 we read that "As long ago as 1851 we find the Superintendent of the National Observatory at Washington urging the extension to the land-for the benefit of farmers, the shipping in VOL. XLIII-No. 255.-26

edness of Europe to the United States for this system: "The establishment of meteorological societies during the last twenty years must be commemorated as contributing in a high degree to the advancement of the science. In this respect the United States stand preeminent."]

Louis, destroying several lives and $1,000,000 | worth of property.

In former publications the writer has demonstrated at length the fire-sprinkled paths and tracks of these storms, some of which are generated in the torrid zone, and sweep over the Gulf of Mexico, and thence up the valley of the Mississippi; or, shooting off from the bosom of the Gulf Stream, strike upon the Atlantic coast, and thence commence their march upon the sea-board and central States of the Union. In these published papers the view taken of these tropic-born cyclones is, with some modifications, that announced in 1831, and then substantially demonstrated by Mr. William C. Redfield, of New York, viz., that they rotate around a calm centre of low barometer, in a direction contrary to the hands of a watch in the north- | ern hemisphere, and with the hands of a watch in the southern hemisphere.

"The once noble ship, the pride not only of our own navy, but of the whole craft of shipbuilders over all the world, was now only an unmanageable wreck. There was little left for the wind to do but entangle the more the masses of broken spars, torn sails, and parted ropes, which were held together by the wire rigging. An hour or two later the tempest began sensibly to abate, and confidence increased in the ability of the ship to hold together. When daylight dawned the danger was over, and we first became aware of the astonishing amount of damage the ship had incurred in bearing us through the perils of that dreadful night. It was evident that she had sacrificed herself to save us."

The writer was aware, when this view was first publicly sustained by himself, that it was not accepted by all meteorologists.

The observations, of the most reliable and extended character, made within the last few years, go far to show that the storms which descend on low latitudes of the earth from high polar regions are, as the storms of the tropical regions, likewise of a rotary or cyclonical char

ter went down, and several hundred lives were lost, in sight of the island of Anglesea, on the coast of Wales. "The Royal Charter gale, so remarkable in its features, and so complete in its illustrations," as Admiral Fitzroy has well remarked, "we may say (from the fact of its having been noted at so many parts of the English coast, and because the storm passed over the middle of the country), is one of the very best to examine which has occurred for some length of time."

It would, perhaps, be impossible to give a more vivid and exact account of a cyclone (or typhoon) than the following account of the typhoon of the United States war vessel Idaho.* After depicting the forlorn condition of the vessel after she had passed through the semi-acter. circle of the storm, the eye-witness writes: One of the most beautiful illustrations of the "At half past seven in the evening the barom- law which governs these atmospheric disturbeter had fallen from 30.05 to 27.62. Suddenly ances may be found in the gale which is so celthe mercury rose to 27.90, and with one wild, ebrated as that in which, on the 25th of Ocunearthly, soul-thrilling shriek the wind as sud-tober, 1859, the noble steamship Royal Chardenly dropped to a calm, and those who had been in these seas before knew that we were in the terrible vortex of the typhoon, the dreaded centre of the whirlwind. The ship had been fast filling with water, and fruitless efforts had been made to work the pumps; but when the wind died away the men jumped joyfully to the brakes, exclaiming, 'The gale is broken! we are all safe!' For the officers there was no such feeling of exultation. They knew that, if they did not perish in the vortex, they had still to encounter the opposite semicircle of the typhoon, and that with a disabled ship. It was as though a regiment of freshly wounded soldiers had been ordered to meet a new enemy in battle, and that without delay, for the cessation of the wind was not to be a period of rest. Till then the sea had been beaten down by the wind, and only boarded the vessel when she became completely unmanageable; but now the waters, relieved from all restraint, rose in their own might. Ghastly gleams of lightning revealed them piled up on every side in rough pyramidal masses, mountain high, the revolving circle of wind which every where inclosed them causing them to boil and tumble as though they were being stirred in some mighty caldron. "At twenty minutes before eight o'clock the vessel entered the vortex; at twenty minutes past nine o'clock it had passed, and the hurricane returned, blowing with renewed violence from the north, veering to the west.

On

At the fatal time the barometer, for over at least a thousand square miles of sea and land, was generally low, and had become so, gradually, during many previous days-some tell us as much as a whole week. On the west coast of Ireland all was quiet in the atmosphere; the sky in the north of Scotland was serene. the 21st of September a vessel passed the Scilly Islands and encountered no gale, and on the 23d securely left the Channel soundings. On the 24th a vessel bound for Africa sailed from Liverpool, and met no storm. The Channel squadron noticed the low barometer of 28.50 inches. In London rain was incessant and heavy, and the wind was from the south, while at Liverpool the winds were cold and northerly. On the dark and rainy afternoon and evening of the same day the Royal Charter was making way around Anglesea, close in shore, to her sadly chosen anchorage on the north side of that island, just in the place where she would feel the full force of the next day's tempest. Atlantic Monthly, March, 1870: "A Night in a The tempest broke upon her the next morning Typhoon." near seven o'clock, and in one short hour" that

doubly powered ship of iron," which had circum- | the conflict of the two currents, the polar and navigated the globe, was destroyed, with nearly the equatorial, in high latitudes, is marked by all on board. Another vessel, and a wooden sudden transitions in January from mild, moist, sailing ship, not a steamer, the Cumming, and sev- and balmy weather to a sudden and fearful cold, eral smaller vessels, encountered the same gale below zero. The furious battle of the elements but a few miles off, and by a few hours' sailing rages, and reminds us of the famous Homeric on the starboard tack (standing to the west- description of Hector's attack on the Grecian ward) ran out of the cyclone, and not one was walls: wrecked, nor even materially injured. Had the Royal Charter, with her powerful engines and the use of her sails, followed their example on the morning of the 25th, all would, doubtless, have been right with her. The gale did not reach Liverpool until about twelve hours after the wreck of the noble vessel. Liverpool is about fifty or sixty miles from Anglesea.

The peculiarity of this gale which swept over the deck of the Charter was its intense coldness, being a polar current. Examining the accompanying diagram of "the Royal Charter storm," we see the tropical current advancing around the south and east of England with great force, to be, with greater force, speedily driven back by the polar current.

"As when two scales are charged with doubtful loads,
From side to side the trembling balance nods,
Till, poised aloft, the resting beam suspends
Each equal weight, nor this nor that descends."
It may suffice to give one instance of this in
the great northwestern snow-storm of January
last. Speaking of this storm, the Chicago Times
of the 16th of January said:

"The tremendous storm which has just passcd is without a peer in the knowledge of the oldest inhabitant.

"The great snow-storm which visited Chicago on Friday (the 13th) first made its appearance on the 10th ultimo at Reno, among the Rocky Mountains, where it commenced its initiatory rage with such violence and with such a blinding fall of snow that the workmen repairing the Union Pacific track could not see ten feet before them. It made its appearance

A letter from Dublin said, "In England you have had a tremendous gale (October 25-26). Here it was not felt." A dead calm and a sharp frost of unusual severity prevailed on the west in Cheyenne on the 11th, and since then has coast of Ireland. A vessel returning from Ice-been steadily advancing across the country. land had heavy gales from the east-northeast between October 23 and 28.

On

It has been one of those peculiar northwest
storms whose coming was not indicated by the
falling of the mercury in the barometer.
the other hand, the barometer rose, while the
thermometer fell. The immediate cause of the
storm is indicated in the falling of the thermometer
so suddenly after such mild weather.

"The earliest direct news of the storm was received from Cheyenne, the most westward meteorological station, it having commenced to snow there about 4 P.M. on January 11. Reports were also received from Omaha, Duluth, and St. Paul on the same day, showing that the storm had also commenced in those cities. The storm continued, with no cessation of violence, till about midnight of the 12th, when the weather telegrams failed to give any further knowl

"While at Anglesea," says Fitzroy, "the storm came from east-northeast, in the Irish Channel it was northerly; and on the east of Ireland it was from the northwest; in the Straits of Dover it was from the southwest; and on the east coast it was easterly-all at the same minute. Thus," he adds, "there was an apparent circulation of cyclonic commotion passing northward from the 25th to the 27th, being two complete days from its appearance in the Channel, while outside of this circuit the wind became less and less violent; and it is very remarkable that, even so near as on the west coast of Ireland, there was fine weather, with light breezes, while in the Bristol Channel it blew a northerly and westerly gale. At Galway and at Limer-edge of it. It had suddenly disappeared; but ick, on that occasion, there were moderate breezes only, while over England the wind was passing in a tempest, blowing from all points of the compass in irregular succession, around a central, variable area."*

only to strike Chicago with a premonitory drizzle of rain on the morning of the 13th, the same symptoms showing themselves in St. Louis and Milwaukee.

"The amount of snow that has fallen during the present storm is almost unparalleled; but, great as it is, it furnishes no gauge for the quantity of moisture that has reached the earth, as the amount of rain and sleet held in the snow makes it almost as heavy as salt. Another interesting feature of the storm has been its ex

The phenomena of the Royal Charter gale have been given not as being peculiar or anomalous in the annals of cyclonology, but for the accuracy with which they were recorded, and because they furnish the reader with the type to which most American storms, and, indeed, all storms, more or less strictly conform, as geo-treme duration, as compared with its violence. graphical or orographical circumstances permit or prevent

Storms similar in their conditions to that of the Royal Charter not infrequently occur in the United States, especially in the winter, when

• See Fitzroy's Weather Book, p. 300.

As bitter as the driving wind has been, the storm took thirty-nine hours to reach Chicago from Omaha, a progress which would give the very slow momentum of about ten miles an hour."

The Chicago storm was from the great polar current, and, as is the wont of westerly storms

(from the orographic peculiarity of the country), made its way to the Atlantic along the lakes and through the valley

of the St. Lawrence.

"With daily telegrams from the Azores and Iceland," Buchan says, "two and often three days' intimation of almost every storm that visits Great Britain could be had." The Iceland telegram would give tidings from the polar air current, and that from the Azores would advertise the movement

of the tropical current.

It is highly important that the United States should have telegrams from the Pacific, and from the valley of the Saskatchawan, or some point in British America on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The importance of reports from the southwest also was fearfully demonstrated in March, during the already mentioned interruption of the Signal Service, when the tornado in St. Louis destroyed many lives, and $1,000,000 worth of property.

It is due to the cyclone theory, or "law of storms," here and heretofore advanced by the writer, to say that many of the storms which seem to be deviations from the cyclonic law are modified by interfering cyclones. This view was formally adopted by the committee of the Meteorological Department of the London Board of Trade. Mr. Stevenson, of Berwickshire, England, as quoted by Fitzroy in the Board of Trade Report for 1862 (page 33), has some striking observations, founded on his own invaluable labors: "The storms which pass over the British Isles are found generally to act in strict accordance with the cyclonic theory. In many cases, however, this accordance is not so obvious, and the phenomena become highly complicated. This is a result which often happens when two or more cyclones interfere-an event of very frequent occurrence. When interferences of this description take place we have squalls, calms (often accompanied by heavy rains), thunder-storms, great variations in the direction and force of the wind, and much irregularity in the barometric oscillations. These complex results are, however, completely explicable by the cyclonic theory, as I have tested in several instances. A very beautiful and striking example of a compound cyclonic disturbance of the atmosphere at this place was investigated by me in September, 1840, and found to be due to the interference of three storms." Mr. Stevenson gives a number of instances of interfering cyclones which confirm this view. The points of interference, where two cyclones strike and

revolve against each other, are best marked by a | tives, in which he stands as one of the most peculiarly and treacherously fine rain.

"In my inquiries about these northeasters I have been informed by people living here, who have for years observed their peculiarities, that frequently steamers and vessels leave here and have pleasant weather down the lake, and that vessels leaving a short time after encounter these northeasters in all their violence; at the same time passengers from the southwest Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of (Saint Paul) meet no storm until within a few miles of the lake.