S

.. AUGUST..

23

MONDAY

A NEW ERA IN WEATHER FORECASTS

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OME months ago this department gave a brief account of the long-period weather forecasts of Upper India-the only region where such distant prophesies can be made with any approach to accuracy. There it is possible because of the regular action of the monsoons and the effect on the weather of the coming half year of the Himalayan snowfall. How very much we are cut off in the western hemisphere from such a necessary luxury is shown by the delight of our meteorologists in the extension of their prophesies even twelve hoursscientific gain that has just become almost certain from the experiments with kite observations. In the trials of our National Weather Bureau chief, Mr. Moore, it was found that the observations taken of air currents and atmospheric conditions at a height of one or two miles above the earth gave evidences of changes in the weather thirty-six hours before these changes occurred; whereas the best that had been attempted in the regular work of the mundane observers was to plan our climatic fate some twenty-four hours ahead of time. This very decided gain is, of course, a result of the enthusiastic interest in kite-flying which has been so much exploited in the papers of late. Long before this fact had been ascertained-that the weather changes made themselves known first in the upper strata of the air-the enthusiasts of Boston, Bayonne, and New York had been hoisting their thermometers and barometers and still more abstruse instruments behind the stout kites or series of kites in the general thought that such an innovation ought to prove valuable. How

valuable it is can be imagined by anyone who realizes at all that weather forecasts have a use other than as material for mildly derisive witticism at the breakfast-table. The captain of the three-master in New York harbor is glad enough to have his weather wisdom supplemented by the sight of hurricane signals and the telegraphic news that a howling northeaster is thrashing up the Jersey coast. The farmer who wants to cut his hay or plant his corn is rather keen as an observer of nature too; but in deciding the destinies of an Iowa cornfield, the human senses cannot compete with the telegraphic announcement of general rain conditions in Kansas, moving rapidly eastward, and every hour gained in the knowledge of these probabilities-of course they can only be probabilities, which the cynic of the egg-cup does not take into account-means so much more safety for the crew and so much less loss for Cincinnatus.

What a great business this is, of foretelling the weather, is scarcely appreciated by the average man, to whom the italicized corner of the paper becomes so fascinating before a parade, a football game, or a fishing trip. The one hundred and fifty regular stations are manned by three or four hundred welltrained officials who send out about 45,000 telegrams each day to each other, and perhaps every morning 10,000 maps, showing the condition of the atmosphere all over the United States. The predictions are made by States, and also for special localities. It is not only by maps and newspaper news, either, that the work of the bureau reaches the public; every day 25,000 postal cards are mailed to country post-offices that can be reached within three or four hours, to acquaint the villages and agricultural districts with the weather news; and at the important

ports, hurricane flags warn the mariner. Special telegrams are sent to the great shipping companies, and certain concerns have a regular paid service by which they are notified of destructive frosts and snow. The ice companies, of course, have a high respect for the man who can predict a long freeze-or very hot weather!—and the splendid work done by the special department of river and flood service in the recent aberrations of the Mississippi River gives an idea of another great value of the prophets. There is every reason in this information to dignify and to make appreciated this branch of national effort.

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OUNT ST. ELIAS, a lonely glaciercovered volcano some two hundred and fifty miles northeast of Sitka, is having greatness thrust upon it. First, it has been selected as the starting-point of the proposed boundary line between British North America and the United States-that boundary line which has come THE ATTEMPTON so near giving us a war with MTSTELIAS our cousins and which yet promises some very pretty complications of the "fiftytwo-forty or fight" variety. Second, Mount St. Elias has aroused the ambition of an indisputable Duke to surmount its icy and hitherto unattainable summit; to be more explicit, Prince Luigi Amadeo of Savoy, Duke of Abruzzi and nephew of the King of Italy, is leading an invasion of this international eminence. Four important attacks have already been made on the Elias peak: Lieutenant Schwatka's; in 1886, which attained a height of 7,200 feet via the southwest flank. This was futile enough to stir the blood of all good members of the Alpine Club, for Elias is 18,000 feet high- not therefore among the very first giants, but grisly enough because of its Arctic condition. An Englishman named Topham went the Lieutenant 4,000 feet better in 1891, and in 1893 Mr. Russell tried the northwest slope. The first effort failed, but next year he came back to the same starting-point, and had climbed about 14,500 feet, when the weather suddenly thickened and the avalanches thrust him back. It is this northwest route that the Prince and his comrades will probably

take. On his staff, which includes four experienced Alpine guides, and some Americans, is Vittoria Sella, the fearless Italian mountain-climber; he takes with him a camera, with which he does wonderful work in reproducing impressive scenes at great altitudes, and in giving wonderfully faithful representations of the glaciers and their action on the earth-crust.

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THE HOLLAND SUBMARINE

HE very suspicion and weariness which have become chronic in our endurance of imaginative accounts of war-machines and methods that never will be seen on sea or land, add to the interest aroused by the war-boat which Mr. John P. Holland has really invented, and has really within a few weeks successfully launched. Of all Jules Verne's fictions, the conceit of Captain Nemo and his deep-sea venture remains the most vivid; and while Mr. Holland's craft at Elizabeth, N. J., does not by any means contemplate any trip of twenty thousand leagues under the sea, there is sufficient novelty and dramatic possibility in her when considered as a mere fighting machine, capable of submerged propulsion. This Holland boat is an entirely private enterprise, just as private as Mr. Benedict's yacht Oneida. A government boat on Mr. Holland's plans has been building at Baltimore during this year, but the inventor became impatient of the delay necessitated by official red tape, and has built on his own account this smaller, but, according to his own theory, even more effective boat. She is about fifty feet long, or about as long as a cable-car, and a trifle over ten feet in diameter; she looks, out of water, something like a fattish cigar and rather more like a thinnish sweet-potato. She is evidently meant for business and not for play. There is no sign of even an elementary deck, though ropes and an anchor can be stowed away in some exterior lockers. Out of her dorsal fin there rises a small iron turret, eight inches high, and capable of telescopic extension to thirty inches. Inside, the boat is divided into two compartments, so crammed with machinery and implements of war that a man would have difficulty in finding room to stretch his arms. A single screw propels the boat; it is driven when the vessel is travelling at the surface by a gas-engine which can give a speed of some

BOAT

eight knots an hour, and keep at work, on a pinch, 2,000 miles without laying in a fresh store of fuel. When submerged, a very perfectiy constructed electric motor, capable of giving fifty horse-power for six hours, is used; it can, in case of need, spurt to one hundred and fifty horse-power for a couple of hours. This submersion, the most destructive and picturesque virtue of the Holland, cannot be deeper than one hundred and fifty feet, and an automatic system of pistons keeps the boat above this dangerous depth and below the surface by the action of a maximum and minimum pressure on them. To submerge herself suddenly, the Holland can either use the horizontal rudder which she carries in addition to the regular perpendicular one, or she can increase her water ballast.

With all these accomplishments in such a small boat, one will wonder what space can be left for armament. Forward there is an eighteen-inch torpedo expulsion tube that will start on their murderous errand the three great Whitehead "automobile" torpedoes. Second, there is a torpedo-gun, eight inches in diameter, that will throw a shell carrying eighty pounds of dynamite through the air to the distance of a mile and a half. Third, a submarine-gun, pneumatic, like the rest, is trained aft, to hurl another eighty pounds of dynamite through the water to a distance of about half

a mile. In all, the boat will carry twenty dynamite shells, any one of which is capable of destroying instantly the stoutest battle-ship afloat, if it strikes where it will do the most good.

Provided the Holland obeys her owner's command to dive and reappear, as it seems likely she will, there is no doubt that her advent will produce a change in naval warfare comparable to the exploits of the Monitor. With such a craft approaching a battle-ship, diving as soon as she comes within range and continuing either deeply submerged or with only a hand or so of a twenty-inch turret out of the water, there will be nothing for that battle-ship to do except either to run or to remain and suffer the successive effects of a score of dynamite explosions.

If the Holland is successful in getting directly beneath the ship, she can suddenly shove her deadly snout out of the water, discharge her bow-gun, and then quickly sink out of sight. As to training rifles on her, there is no perfection of gunnery known that could give even a forlorn chance of hitting her, small mark as she is, in the little time that she will remain exposed.

The question is, will she respond to her two helms, and her engine power. The five men who form her crew will garner sensations enough for one life when this is first tested in an actual engagement.