Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/576

558 meteorological stations are placed along the line, the highest being 6,800 feet above the sea. Another line of stations follows the Rio Grande River from its month to the elevated plateau of Colorado.

"The Mexican telegraph-lines now extend from the mouth of the Rio Grande River to San Luis, thence to Tampico, and thence through Vera Cruz along the coast nearly to the extremity of Yucatan. The Signal Service are preparing to place stations down even to Yucatan. The Gulf of Mexico has been nearly encircled with a telegraph-line, along which meteorological stations will be placed at such short intervals that no hurricane or storm can move from the Gulf without notice of its escape and the direction of its flight being given at once to the whole country.

"Arrangements have been made for a chain of stations to the extreme eastern end of the West Indies, all connected by telegraph with the Washington office. If Congress is wise enough to give sufficient appropriation to carry out these excellent plans, it will be impossible for any hurricane to enter the United States from the south unheralded, for hourly bulletins of its progress can be posted in every seaport. Who can estimate the lives and treasure that such an arrangement may save? Congress cannot be too generous to the Signal Service.

"To show the power of the telegraph in this connection, I may mention that General Myer recently sent, at twelve o'clock at night, an order to each meteorological station in this country. It was unexpected by the corps, but so perfect is the discipline that within ninety minutes the Washington office received answers from every station, even including that on the lofty elevation of Pike's Peak, and the lonely desert of Fort Yuma.

"At General Myer's suggestion, an international meteorological organization was effected in 1873. Observations are now taken once a day, simultaneously, at every meteorological station in the world, and the results forwarded to the Signal Service Office at Washington.

"Every day this office publishes a bulletin, giving the record of these simultaneous observations from all stations. The date of the bulletin is necessarily long enough after the observations to admit of their reaching Washington. The climate of the world is thus placed under our eyes at once. When this is carried to perfection, the laws that govern climate may be determined."

The petrified forest in the desert of Humboldt County, Northwestern Nevada, has been examined. The stumps of the trees now transformed into rock are found in an upright position, with their roots imbedded in the soil as when growing—many of the stumps measuring from fifteen to twenty feet in circumference; and the ground was found strewed with trunks and limbs in the same petrified state, retaining their natural shape and size. There were no