St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 | Page 5

done by the familiar weather-vane and the anemometer. The vane shows the direction, and the anemometer is an instrument which indicates the velocity of the wind.
It is by a right understanding of all these instruments that the signal service officer is enabled to tell what the weather says of itself; for they are the pens with which the weather writes out the facts from which the officer makes up his reports for the benefit of all concerned. Thus, however wildly and blindly the storm may seem to come, it sends messengers telling just where it arose, what course it will take, and how far it will extend. But it tells its secrets to those only who pay strict attention.
The system of danger signals, adopted by the United States Government, has proved of great benefit to shipping. All along the coasts are stations, at which plainly visible signals are displayed, to warn ship-captains of approaching storms. The reports of observers at the stations are required to give all instances in which vessels have remained in port on account of official warnings given. In these cases danger was avoided, and statistics show that disasters to shipping have been considerably fewer since the introduction of the cautionary signals.
The agricultural interests of the country also have been greatly benefited by the daily bulletins sent to every farming district in the land by the Weather Department. These bulletins are made from telegraphic reports received at appointed centers of distribution, where they are at once printed, placed in envelopes, and addressed to designated post-offices in the district to be supplied. Each postmaster receiving a bulletin has the order of the Postmaster-General to display it instantly in a frame furnished for the purpose.
The bulletins reach the different offices, and are displayed in the frames, on the average, at eleven o'clock in the morning, making about ten hours from the time the report first left the chief signal officer until it appeared placarded at every center of the farming populations, and became accessible to all classes even in the most distant parts of the country.
The information given on these bulletins has been found especially valuable to those farmers who take an interest in the study of meteorology, or the science of weather, and the facts announced are so plain, that any intelligent person may profit by them. For instance, each bulletin now announces, for its particular district, what winds in each month have been found most likely, and what least likely, to be followed by rain. Attention given to this one simple piece of information will result in increasing the gains and reducing the losses of harvesting.
Warnings of expected rises or falls in the great rivers are made with equal regularity, telegraphed, bulletined in frames, and also published by the newspapers, at the different river cities. These daily reports give the depths of water at different points in the rivers' courses, and thus make it easy for river shipping to be moored safely in anticipation of low water, when ignorance might lead to the grounding of the boats on sand-bars or mud-banks. The notices of the probable heights which freshets may reach, are followed by preparations upon the "levees" and river-banks, to guard against overflows.
The United States Signal Service is a branch of the army. No one is admitted to it who is under twenty-one years of age. Every candidate has to undergo before enlistment an examination, the chief subjects of which are spelling, legible hand-writing, proficiency in arithmetic, and the geography of the United States, physical and political.
Successful candidates are regularly enlisted in the army, as non-commissioned officers, and go through a course of very systematic instruction in military signaling and telegraphy. They are assigned afterward to different posts, where they are required to make observations and report the same by wire three times a day, to the commanding officer at Washington. These observations are made by means of the instruments I have described, and include the different appearances in the sky; and at all the stations they are made at the same hour, according to Washington time. The telegraph gives to the Herald of the Weather and his aids the advantage of hearing from all the hundred and forty-odd observers almost at the same time; and when all this information has been gathered up, studied out, and re-arranged, the same swift servant takes all over the country, again almost at one time, the ripe results of the care and watching of more than seven score persons separated by hundreds and even thousands of miles from the central office.
I should like to describe the instruments fully, but must content myself with telling you what remarkable things some of them do. The self-registering barometer, for instance, is made to actually photograph a storm; another is made to draw