Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/144

 140 The fact is that the U. S. Signal Service, which was the forerunner of the present U. S. Weather Bureau, was established in 1870, and that Japan had, as early as in 1872, a meteorological observatory at Hakodaté, and the Japanese meteorological service was organized in 1875, the exchange of international simultaneous reports with the U. S. Signal Office of Washington having been established twenty-eight years ago. The organization of the Japanese Meteorological Service, however, was not completed until a system of weather telegraphy was inaugurated and weather maps with forecasts were printed in 1883.

The Meteorological Service of Japan is placed under the direction of the Central Meteorological Observatory and under the supervision of the Minister of State for Education; it maintains 134 meteorological stations, of which 70 are the provincial stations of the first order, 2 are attached to the Central Observatory, 7 are controlled by the Governor General of Formosa and the rest are the stations of the second order. All of these first and second stations send their meteorological reports to the Central Meteorological Observatory and exchange daily telegrams with the latter. Besides these, there are 1,214 stations of the third order which consists of village offices, district offices, police stations, schools, etc. Each is provided with a set of maximum and minimum thermometers, an ordinary thermometer, rain gauge, etc., and each observer makes daily observations at 10 (135th meridian time or 8  75th meridian time). They send their reports by mail to the respective provincial stations to which they belong.

The stations of the first order make their observations every hour and those of the second order six observations daily. The principal instruments in use at a station are a standard barometer of the Fortin design; a portable mercurial barometer; a psychrometer of August's pattern; a standard thermometer (Cassella or Fuess); maximum and minimum thermometers (Fuess); Robinson cup-anemometer with electric contact device; a wind vane; a rain gauge; and an evaporometer. In addition to these instruments, the stations of the first order and most of second-order stations are furnished with solar radiation-thermometers, terrestrial radiation-thermometers, earth-thermometers for the depths of 0.0, 0.3, 1.2, 3.0 m., etc., and a seismograph of the Gray-Milne type. All these instruments are minutely examined and compared with the standard instruments of the Central Meteorological Observatory. The method of observation and reduction conforms strictly to the decisions of the International Meteorological Committee. The Abercromby-Hildebrandsson classification is adopted for the observation of cloud forms, and the International Meteorological Tables are used for the reduction of observations. For computation of humidity from psychrometric observations, Angot's tables are used. The provincial stations publish monthly and annual reports, and exchange their publications with one another. The employees of the stations