said, it would cost nothing additional to have certain of observations reported by telegraph daily to some central office for instantaneous discussion and promulgation.
In addition to Captain Meade's corps, and the Canadians, it was held, when advocating the subject among you, that other army officers, also employed on the lakes—that the lighthouse keepers there, that the agents of the Lake Board of Underwriters, that the colleges, the hospitals, the public institutions and amateur meteorologists on and about the lakes, might without the cost of one additional cent to the public treasury be, in furtherance of this plan, organized into the most effectual and effective corps of observers that was ever engaged in carrying on any plan of physical research; and that all that was required of Congress in the premises was a simple enactment authorizing such an organization, and appropriating a sufficient sum of money to defray the office expenses of treating the observations after they are made, and of announcing the results after they are obtained.
The system of observations which I propose for the lakes should not be confounded with that admirable system which has been so long conducted by the army, and to which alone we are indebted for almost all we know concerning the climatology of the country. The system I propose is an extension to the lakes of that system of co-operation and research which has proved so beneficial for commerce and navigation at sea, with this difference, viz., that certain of the observations be reported daily to a central office by telegraph, and this telegraphic feature is a great improvement upon the sea plan. The army system is not telegraphic; it was established long before the electro magnetic telegraph had any existence; and it originated in this way. When Mr. Calhoun left college—and Yale, I think, was his alma mater—he was in delicate health, and it was thought advisable that he should return to Carolina on horseback. He did so, and for the sake of the mountain air and scenery he skirted along the Alleghenies and Blue Ridge. On that journey he was struck with the difference in the weather that he often observed on opposite sides of the mountains. His youthful mind was impressed with the importance which a properly
