aneously the daily details of the present conditions.

It is this daily detail of fact which the United States government
supplies through the little stations of observation one of which we
have stumbled into on the Jersey beach. Americans, indeed, have from
the first taken hold of this science with a most characteristic effort
to reduce it to practical uses, to bring it at once to bear on the
well-being at least of farmers and navigators. Dove had no sooner
published his chart of isothermal lines and charts, showing the
temperature throughout the world of each month, and also of abnormal
temperatures, than our government issued the _Army Meteorological
Register_ for the United States, which for accuracy and fullness had
never been equaled. In these the temperature and rainfall for each
month of the year were shown. The forecasts of the weather now
published daily in this country, and which come so directly home to
every man's business that Old Probabilities is a real personage to
us all, have been given in England for several years under the
supervision of Admiral Fitzroy.

But it is high time now that we should come back to our little wooden
house on the beach, and tell what we know of its occupants and uses.
The courteous gentleman (in a blue flannel suit for "roughing it")
who sits at the telegraphic wires is Sergeant G----, belonging to the
Signal Service Department of the army. Instruction in this department
is given at Fort Whipple, Va. One hundred officers besides Sergeant
G---- are now in charge of stations, with 139 privates as assistants.
The average force at Fort Whipple is 140 men. These men are, in point
of fact, soldiers liable to be called into active service in the
field: their duty there, however, is not fighting, but signaling and
telegraphy--a duty quite as dangerous as the bearing of arms. Fresh
recruits for this service are divided into those capable of receiving
instruction only in field duty and those for "full service," which
includes, with military signaling and telegraphy, the taking
of meteoric observations, the collating and publication of such
observations, and the deduction from them of correct results. Passing
two examinations successfully in the latter course, the signal-service
soldier is detailed for duty at a post as assistant, and after six
months' satisfactory service is returned to Fort Whipple for the
special instruction given to observer-sergeants. When qualified for
this work