It is this daily detail of fact which the United States government supplies through the little stations of observation one of which we have stumbled into on the Jersey beach.  Americans, indeed, have from the first taken hold of this science with a most characteristic effort to reduce it to practical uses, to bring it at once to bear on the well-being at least of farmers and navigators.  Dove had no sooner published his chart of isothermal lines and charts, showing the temperature throughout the world of each month, and also of abnormal temperatures, than our government issued the Army Meteorological Register for the United States, which for accuracy and fullness had never been equaled.  In these the temperature and rainfall for each month of the year were shown.  The forecasts of the weather now published daily in this country, and which come so directly home to every man’s business that Old Probabilities is a real personage to us all, have been given in England for several years under the supervision of Admiral Fitzroy.

But it is high time now that we should come back to our little wooden house on the beach, and tell what we know of its occupants and uses.  The courteous gentleman (in a blue flannel suit for “roughing it”) who sits at the telegraphic wires is Sergeant G——­, belonging to the Signal Service Department of the army.  Instruction in this department is given at Fort Whipple, Va.  One hundred officers besides Sergeant G——­ are now in charge of stations, with 139 privates as assistants.  The average force at Fort Whipple is 140 men.  These men are, in point of fact, soldiers liable to be called into active service in the field:  their duty there, however, is not fighting, but signaling and telegraphy—­a duty quite as dangerous as the bearing of arms.  Fresh recruits for this service are divided into those capable of receiving instruction only in field duty and those for “full service,” which includes, with military signaling and telegraphy, the taking of meteoric observations, the collating and publication of such observations, and the deduction from them of correct results.  Passing two examinations successfully in the latter course, the signal-service soldier is detailed for duty at a post as assistant, and after six months’ satisfactory service is returned to Fort Whipple for the special instruction given to observer-sergeants.  When qualified for this work he is detailed, as a vacancy occurs, for actual service.

Having thus discovered how our friend the sergeant came into his post, we looked about to see what he had to do there.  The brilliantly-colored flags overhead drew the eye first.  These flags serve the purpose of an international language on the high seas, where no other language is practicable.  Twenty thousand distinct messages can be sent by them.  Rogers’s system has been, adopted by the United States Navy, the Lighthouse Board, the United States Coast Survey and the principal lines of steamers.