was spent in hunting and obtaining the necessary fresh meat for men and dogs. So diligently was this work prosecuted that it was not suspended on the approach of Arctic night, and hunting parties were actually in the field during. every moon of the winter. Game, principally musk oxen, was found much more abundant in the Lake Hazen country, thirty or forty miles westward of Fort Conger, than in its immediate vicinity, and it proved more feasible, therefore, to subsist the dogs where the meat was killed than to pack it across the country to the coast. Snow igloos were built, and in these Peary and his hunters practically spent most of the winter, the rations of the hunters being supplemented from the supplies found at Conger. In all, nearly 200 musk oxen were killed and either consumed by the expedition or packed for its later demands. Peary, accompanied, as in the previous year, by Henson and five Eskimo, left Conger April 5, 1901, for the north by the way of Cape Hecla ; but after some ten days' march along the ice both the men and dogs proved to be out of condition and unfit for the most arduous work certainly ahead of them. Unwilling to risk the success of the undertaking with an inadequate force, or to imperil the lives of any of his party, Peary retraced his steps and returned in good order and without loss to Fort Conger. Late in April, with his entire force, Peary retreated southward to open, if possible, communication with the club's steamer of 1900, from which nothing had been heard. The Windward, fast in her winter quarters at Payer Harbor, near Cape Sabine, with Mrs. Peary and Miss Peary on board, prisoners in the ice for nearly eight months, was reached May 6, and in her Peary made his headquarters until the auxiliary ship of 1901 should arrive. Open water came early at Cape Sabine, and July 3 the Windward extricated herself from the ice and, crossing to the east side of Smith Sound, devoted July to a successful hunt for walrus in Inglefield Gulf to provide food for natives and dogs during the fieldwork of 1902. One hundred and twenty-five were captured and landed at Cape Sabine, the Windward recrossing the sound to Etah, Peary's headquarters of 18991900, where she awaited the Erik, which arrived on August 4, fourteen days from Sydney, C. B. After several weeks of further preparation at Etah, the Erik carried Peary across Smith Sound and landed him and his equipment and supplies on the south side of Herschel Bay, ten miles south of Cape Sabine, his headquarters for next winter. Peary's winter arrangements at Cape Sabine insure comfort, and, with an ample supply of provisions pushed along the route to Fort Conger, he expects to take the field with the returning light of 1902, fully rested and in the best possible condition. During the entire two years since he had been heard from Peary's health was excellent, and the accident to his feet at Fort Conger, in 1899, caused him but slight inconvenience and in nowise impaired his efficiency in the field. During the autumn he expects to make an extensive reconnaissance of the interior and the western coast of Ellesmere Land, with a strong probability of discovering natives hitherto unknown to white men. THE WEATHER BUREAU BY WILLIS L. MOORE, LL. D., CHIEF U. S. WEATHER BUREAU A BOUT the only knowledge that most people have of the workings of the United States Weather Bureau of the Department of Agriculture is gathered from the daily prediction of rain or snow that they encounter at the breakfast table as they glance over the morning paper. They base their estimate of the utility of the weather service on the accuracy of the predictions thus hastily scanned, and many are prone to inquire whether it is true that this service has really made a place for itself in the great industrial economy of our country; whether or not an adequate return is made for the expenditure of over $1,000,000 annually; whether the science of weather forecasting has reached its highest degree of accuracy, and whether it holds out possibilities of future improvement. They would doubtless be amazed if they knew the thousand and one ramifications through which it reaches, daily, probably more than one-half of our adult population. The United States Government spends more for scientific research than any other country in the world. Today every wheel turns with scientific precision, and the arts, the manufactures, and the commerce of this wonderful country are, by the aid of systematic knowledge, being developed far beyond the dreams of the most optimistic person of a quarter of a century ago. The ingenuity of the Yankee and the skill of the American mechanic are only physical and outward manifestations of the inward spirit whose life has been called into existence by the many schools, colleges, and polytechnic institutions with which our broad land is dotted and which, through the knowledge that they reveal of the forces of nature, enable man to harness the invisible powers and make them obedient to his will. Probably in no way have we shown our aptitude in divining from apparent confusion some fundamental principles and in applying those principles to the commerce and the industry of our country more than in the development of the present meteorological service. Where but a few years ago man thought that chaos reigned supreme we are now, by the aid of simultaneous daily meteorological observations, able to trace out the harmonious relations of many physical laws that were previously but little understood. DEVELOPMENT OF METEOROLOGICAL SCIENCE It will be interesting to note that at the time of the founding of the first of the thirteen colonies, at Jamestown, Va., in 1607, practically nothing was known of the properties of the air or of methods for measuring its phenomena. It was not until 1643, twenty-three years after the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, that Torricelli discovered the principle of the barometer and rendered it possible to measure the weight of the superincumbent air at any spot where the wonderful, yet simple, little instrument might be placed. Torricelli's great teacher, Galileo, died without knowing why nature, under certain conditions, abhors a vacuum ; but he had discovered the principle of the thermometer. The data from the readings of these two instruments form * An address presented at the Convention of Weather Bureau Officials, Milwaukee, Wiscon sin, August 27-29, 1901. the foundation of all meteorological science. Their inventors as little appreciated the value of their discoveries as they dreamed of the great western empire which should first use their instruments to measure the inception and development of storms. About one hundred years after the invention of the barometer, namely, in 1747, Benjamin Franklin, patriot, statesman, diplomat, and scientist, divined that certain storms had a rotary motion and that they progressed in a northeasterly direction. It was prophetic that these ideas should have come to him long before any one had ever prepared charts showing observations simultaneously taken at many stations. But, although his ideas in this respect were more important than his act of drawing the lightning from the clouds. and identifying it with the electricity of the laboratory, his contemporaries thought little of his philosophy of storms. It remained for Redfield, Espy, Maury, Loomis, and Abbe, one hundred years later, to gather the data and completely establish the truth of that which the great Franklin had dimly yet wonderfully outlined. Although American scientists were the pioneers in discovering the rotary and progressive character of storms and in demonstrating the practicability of weather services, the United States was the fourth country to give legal autonomy to a weather service; but no one of the other countries had an area of such extent as to render it possible to construct such a broad synoptic picture of air conditions as is necessary in the making of the most useful forecasts. would require an international service, embracing all the countries of Europe, to equal ours in the extent of area covered. It Congress authorized the first appropriation of $20,000 to inaugurate a tentative weather service in 1870. Gen. Albert J. Myer, to whom was assigned the chiefship of the new meteorological service, doubtless had no conception of the future wonderful extension of the system that he was then authorized to begin. It is comparatively easy, with the great system now at our command and with scientists who have had twenty years' experience in watching the development and progression of storms, to herald to the shipping and other industries of the United States forewarnings of coming atmospheric changes that may be destructive to either life or property. property. Former Secretary of Agriculture J. Sterling Morton did much to place the meteorological service of the Government on a suitable foundation by having all of its employés and higher officials classified and placed within the civil service. This was essential to the proper performance of the then existing duties of the service. The present Sec retary of Agriculture, James Wilson, has continued the merit system in the Weather Bureau, and has greatly improved and extended its operations. Thanks to his policy of development, the Weather Service has had a phenomenal growth during the past four years. EXPANSE OF ATMOSPHERIC FIELD SURVEYED BY THE FORECASTER It is a wonderful picture of atmospheric conditions that is presented twice daily to the trained eye of the weather forecaster. It embraces an area extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the north coast of South America over Mexico, the islands of the West Indies and the Bahamas, northward to the uttermost confines of Canadian habitation. It is a panoramic picture of the exact air conditions over this broad area that is twice daily presented to the study of our experts. Hurricanes, cold waves, hot waves, or rainstorms are shown wherever present in this broad area. Their development since last report is noted, and from the knowledge thus gained their future course and intensity is quite successfully forecast. Every twelve hours the kaleidoscope changes, and a new graphic picture of weather conditions is shown. Nowhere else in the world can meteorologists find such an opportunity to study storms and atmospheric changes. TANGIBLE RESULTS OF WEATHER BUREAU WORK Has the Weather Bureau won its way into the hearts and confidence of the American people, and do we feel that the expenditures made for its support are wisely made? Let us answer this question by giving some facts relative to the number of people and industries that are daily in communication with the Bureau. In our Atlantic and Gulf ports, alone, there are floating over $30,000,000 worth of craft on any day of the year; and at every port, whether on the Atlantic, on the Pacific, or on the Lakes, there is either a full meteorological observatory or else a storm-warning displayman who attends to the lighting of the danger lights on the storm-warning towers at night, to the display of danger flags by day, and to the distribution of storm-warning messages among vessel masters. This system is so perfect that the Chief of the Weather Bureau, or the forecaster on duty at the Central office, can dictate a storm warning and feel certain that inside of one hour a copy of the warning will be in the hands of every vessel master in every port of material size in the United States, provided that it is his desire that a complete distribution of the warning be made. As a matter of fact, the storm warnings usually go only to a limited portion of the coast at one time. While the daily predictions of rain or snow, by which, as previously stated, the public measures the value of the weather service, are subject to a considerable element of error, namely about one failure in five predictions, the marine warnings of the service have been so well made that in over six years no protracted storm has reached any point of the United States without the danger warnings being displayed well in advance. As a result of these warnings the loss of life and property has been reduced to a minimum, being doubtless not more than 25 per cent of what it would have been without this extensive system, which comes daily, and almost hourly, into communication with mariners. The public does not appreciate this part of the service that, as a rule, these warnings do not appear in the newspapers because it is not desirable to publish them so far in advance as to unnecessarily hold shipping in port. ping in port. We only aim to place warnings twelve to sixteen hours in advance of the coming of the storm, and then we communicate by telegraph, by messenger, and by warning lights and flags directly with the masters of vessels. It is a notable example of the utility of the new West Indian weather service, and of the wisdom of Congress in continuing as a perpetual instrument of peace the service organized to meet an emergency of war, that the Galveston hurricane was detected on September 1, at the time of its inception, in the ocean south of Porto Rico, and that the new system of West Indian reports gave us such complete simultaneous data that at no time did we lose track of the storm, and everywhere, as it progressed northward, such full information was given that, notwithstanding the extensive commerce of the Gulf of Mexico, little or no loss of life or property occurred upon the open waters of the Gulf, and the destruction at Galveston was many times less than it would have been without the premonition that was given and the activity of the Bureau's officers in urging the people to move from the low ground of the city to its more secure portions. Again, as this storm recurved and passed over the Lake region, the storm warnings were so well distributed that, notwithstanding that the energy of the storm was so great that few vessels were stanch enough to live through its fury, shipping remained safely in harbor and there was not a life lost. These are some of the utilities of which the general public is not thoroughly informed. COLD-WAVE WARNINGS When a marked cold wave develops in the north plateau of the Rocky Mountains, and, by its broad area and great barometric pressure, threatens to sweep southward and eastward with its icy blasts, the meteorological stations of the Bureau are ordered to take observations every few hours in the region immediately in advance of the cold area, and to telegraph the same to headquarters. By this means every phase of the development of the cold area is carefully watched, and when the danger is great each observatory in the threatened region becomes a distributing center, from which warnings are sent to those who have produce or perishable articles of manufacture that need protection against low temperatures. In such cases the system of distribution is so perfect that it is not uncommon for the Bureau to distribute 100,000 telegrams and messages inside of the space of a few hours, so that nearly every city, village, and hamlet receives the information in time to profit thereby. What this means to the farmer and shipper is well illustrated by the fact that we gathered from those personally interested statements relative to the sweep of one cold wave, which showed that over $3,400,000 worth of property that would have been destroyed by the low temperatures was saved. To be sure, sometimes the surging of the great air eddies which constitute our rainstorms and cold waves-one the lowpressure eddy and the other the highpressure eddy-deflects the course of the storm or minimizes the degree of cold, and the warnings may partially or wholly fail of verification; but in these important atmospheric disturbances the warnings are justified in such a large proportion of cases that those whose property is at stake do not longer question the utility of the Government service. That no other country brings its citizens into such close touch with its weather conditions is shown by the fact that even when severe storms are not imminent there is, in addition to the printing of the forecasts in the daily press, a daily distribution of 80,000 telegrams, maps, and bulletins, that place the information in the hands of millions whose personal interests are materially affected by the weather. There are over 2,000 daily papers in the United States, and each one of these prints in a conspicuous place the daily weather predictions. Did it ever occur to you that there is no other information that receives publication and attention by readers each day of the year in every daily paper of the country? There are 47 tri-weekly papers in the United States, 434 semi-weekly, and 14,734 weekly publications, the greater nuinber of which publish the weekly weather crop bulletins of the Bureau for their respective States. Each State forms a section of the national service, and from a central office issues monthly reports on the minute climatology of the State. This climatological data is gathered from standard thermometers and rain gages that are placed in each county. The information finds extensive publication also in the weekly and monthly periodicals. VALUE OF THE WEATHER SERVICE TO RURAL INDUSTRIES Few people realize what a complete system the Weather Bureau forms for the accurate and rapid collection and dissemination of crop information. It has 1,200 paid and skillfully trained officials outside of Washington, who are |