Brussels Conference, § 584. — How Navigators may obtain a Set of Lieutenant M. F. Maury’s “Wind and Current Charts”, 585. — The Abstract Log, 586.
I HAVE, I am aware, not done more in this little book than given only a table or two of contents from the interesting volume which the Physical Geography of the Sea is destined some day to open up to us. The subject is a comprehensive one: there is room for more laborers, and help is wanted. Nations, no less than individuals; “stay-at-home travelers,” as well as those who “go down to the sea in ships,” are concerned in the successful prosecution of the labors we have in hand. We are now about to turn over a new leaf in navigation, on which we may confidently expect to see recorded much information that will tend to lessen the dangers of the sea, and to shorten the passages of vessels trading upon it. We are about to open in the volume of Nature a new chapter, under the head of MARINE METEOROLOGY. In it are written the laws that govern those agents which “the winds and the sea obey.” In the true interpretation of these laws, and the correct reading of this chapter, the planter as well as the merchant, the husbandman as well as the mariner, and states as well as individuals, are concerned. All have a deep interest in these laws; for with the hygrometrical conditions of the atmosphere, the wellbeing of plants and animals is involved. The health of the invalid is often dependent upon a dry or a damp atmosphere, a cold blast or a warm wind. The atmosphere pumps up our rivers from the sea, and transports them through the clouds to their sources among the hills; and upon the regularity with which this machine, whose motions, parts, and offices we now wish to study, lets down that moisture, and the seasonable supply of rain which it furnishes to each region of country, to every planter, and upon all cultivated fields, depend the fruitfulness of this country, the sterility of that. The principal maritime nations, therefore, have done well by agreeing to unite upon one plan of observation, and to co-operate with their ships upon the high seas with the view of finding out all that patient research, systematic, laborious investigation, may reveal to us concerning the winds and the waves; and philosophical travelers, and every sailor that has a ship under his foot, may do even better by joining in this system.
584. By the recommendations of the BRUSSELS CONFERENCE [1853], every one who uses the sea is commanded or invited to make certain observations; or, in other words, to propound certain queries to Nature, and to give us a faithful statement of the replies she may make. Now, unless we have accurate instruments, instruments that will themselves tell the truth, it is evident that we can not get at the real meaning of the answers that Nature may give us. An incorrect observation is not only useless of itself, but, when it passes undetected among others that are correct, it becomes worse than useless; nay, it is mischievous there, for it vitiates results that are accurate, places before us wrong premises, and thus renders the good of no value.
585. Those ship-masters who, entering this field as fellow-laborers, will co-operate in the mode and manner recommended by the Brussels Conference, and keep, voyage after voyage, and as long as required, a journal of observations and results according to a prescribed form — and which form is annexed, under the title of Abstract Log — are entitled, by sending the same, at the end of the voyage, to the Superintendent of the National Observatory, for a copy of my "Sailing Directions", and such sheets of the Charts as relate to the cruising-ground of the co-operator.