reasoning he explained how descending air must heat by compression. In 1843 Tracy made an important contribution to the subject. Redfield had claimed that the air in storm whirls neither moves in concentric curves nor along radial lines into the interior of the storm, but spirally inward. Tracy proved that Redfield was right, for he showed that the rotation of the earth must deflect all air currents to the right of the initial direction in the Northern Hemisphere, whether in storm whirls or out of them. From 1840 to 1860 the other Americans who added most to our knowledge of meteorology were Coffin, Maury, Henry and Loomis. Matthew Fontaine Maury, of the U. S. Navy, was the pioneer in marine meteorology. He mapped the oceans and determined the direction and force of winds and water currents. In 1855 he published his "Physical Geography of the Sea and its Meteorology."

The invention of the electric telegraph made it possible to apply the developing science of meteorology to the art of weather forecasting. Professor Joseph Henry, of the Smithsonian Institution, in 1856, was the first person in this country (probably in the world) to collect by telegraph simultaneously taken daily observations of the weather and plot them on a publicly displayed map, although it does not appear that predictions were published or made, except in a tentative way. His demonstration showed, however, the feasibility of a National Weather Bureau, such as Doctor Increase A. Lapham, of Wisconsin, had diligently advocated for several years preceding, and such as Maury had suggested as a result of his studies of the storms of the sea and as Redfield had recommended in 1846. Henry's map was discontinued after having been in operation only a short time, as was a weather report issued by Professor Cleveland Abbe at Cincinnati, in

the fall of 1869, with the aid of the Western Union Telegraph Company and the Cincinnati Board of Trade. But the persistent study of Lapham in taking simultaneous observations with Dr. Asa Horr, of Dubuque, Iowa, 1853 and along to 1860, and the publishing of results in the Milwaukee Sentinel in 1861, showing, as Jefferson and Madison had done in Virginia, that weather changes also progress from the West in the Mississippi valley; and his work in collecting and compiling records of the loss of life and property on the Great Lakes due to storms, and his petitions to legislative, commercial and scientific bodies was mainly and immediately responsible for the resolution introduced in Congress by General Halbert E. Paine, of Wisconsin, in 1870, that finally initiated a weatherforecasting system in the United States that has grown to be the largest of its kind in the world and more intimately to serve the people than does any other. Dr. Lapham declined a position at the headquarters of the new service in Washington but did serve for a time at Chicago, where he received the observations from other cities, made a weather map and issued the first government forecasts, or probabilities, as they were called at that time. Prof. Abbe was appointed an assistant to the chief at this time, which position he held to the day of his death in 1916.

Until 1891 the service was a part of the Signal Corps of the U. S. Army, and the chiefs were, in the order of service, General Albert J. Meyer, General Wm. B. Hazen, and General A. W. Greely. It then became a Bureau in the Agricultural Department, with Professor Mark W. Harrington as chief, who served four years and was succeeded by Professor Willis L. Moore, who directed its affairs for eighteen years, and was succeeded by Professor Chas. F. Marvin.

HENRY AUGUSTUS WILLARD: HIS LIFE AND

TIMES.

BY HENRY KELLOGG WILLARD.

(Read before the Society, May 21, 1912.)

My father, Henry Augustus Willard, son of Joseph Willard and Susan Dorr Clapp Willard, his wife, was born in Westminster, Vt., May 14, 1822. He was one of eight children, seven of whom lived to mature age, and was the third son and one of five brothers, all of whom were at one time located in Washington. The other members of the family were Edwin Dorr Willard, born 1818, who died in Brooklyn, New York, in 1863. He was, at one time, associated with my father in the hotel business in "Willard's Hotel" and formerly kept the National Hotel in this city. At the time of his death, he was a Paymaster in the Army. The second of the family, Joseph Clapp Willard, was in active business with my father from 1853 to 1861, in the keeping of Willard's Hotel, and was, at the time of his death, January, 1897, sole owner of the Willard Hotel property.

My father was the third member of the family. He was followed by two sisters-Mary Ann Willard, later Mrs. George E. Howe, of Brattleboro, Vermont, who died in North Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1905, and Susan Dorr Willard, later Mrs. George M. Dickinson, of Charlestown, New Hampshire, who died in Washington, December 18, 1907.

The sixth member of the family, Mr. C. Stevens Willard, who was employed by my father at one time