Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 4.djvu/355

Rh first scientific men of the age. This happened in this wise.

Here was a man absolutely without any scientific education. Scientific methods and apparatus were unknown to him. But what he did have was a pair of open and remarkably active eyes, a restlessly inquiring mind and an exquisite faculty of putting two and two together. In one word, he was a keen observer and a keen reasoner at the same time. He became a great light of science by simply applying his penetrating common-sense to the things he saw. One of his first achievements was his famous theory about the movement of storms. The way he made his discovery was thoroughly characteristic. One evening, in 1743, Franklin wanted to observe an eclipse of the moon which was to occur at nine o'clock. Before that hour a violent northeast storm arose, and the eclipse could not be seen. Some time afterward he read in a Boston paper that the storm had begun there only an hour after the eclipse was over. Now, Boston is situated northeast of Philadelphia. And here was a storm blowing from the northeast, coming therefore from Boston, and arriving in Philadelphia a good deal earlier than it had occurred at the place it apparently started from. “There must be a mistake somewhere,” most people would have said, and dismissed the matter. “Very curious,” said Franklin, “let us look into it.” He wrote to Boston and heard that the facts were actually so. He inquired further and found that it was usually so with these northeast storms. Now he looked round for analogies, and then settled upon the following explanation:

Suppose a great tract of country, land and sea, to wit, Florida and the Bay of Mexico, to have clear weather for several days, and to be heated by the sun, and its air thereby exceedingly rarefied. Suppose the country Northeastward, as