Maury was destined not to live to see the scheme of meteorological observations and crop reports, upon which he had spent so much thought and labor, in operation; but not long after his death a part of his program was carried out when there was an international conference of meteorologists at Vienna in 1873, the United States being represented by General Albert James Myer of the Signal Service of the Army. There are, indeed, those who would deny him any part in the establishment of the present Weather Bureau. On the contrary, there are others who would go to the opposite extreme and give him all the credit for bringing it about. For example, Mr. E. P. Dorr, who was at one time an observer for the Smithsonian and afterwards President of the Board of Lake Underwriters, wrote to Mr. Thompson B. Maury, at that time (1873) in the Signal Office, in Washington that Maury’s “intelligent, original mind invented and suggested the present system of meteorological observations; and the writer wishes this in some way to be put upon record, to do justice to the dead Maury, a man whose name and memory will live in all civilized countries on the globe, throughout all time, as an original, great mind.... I could not rest unless I told some one that the late M. F. Maury was the originator in design and detail, in all its parts, of the present system of meteorological observations now so generally taken all over the country”. The question of due credit is a perplexing one; but certainly no one could cavil at the modest claim made by Maury’s son Matthew in the following letter: “In 1869, Abbé took the question up and began issuing local forecasts from Cincinnati Observatory and out of his success here and efforts in Washington grew the Weather Bureau in November, 1870, with General Myer at its head, to whom belongs the credit of working up all the details and putting the thing on such a practical footing. Till now the Washington work is the admiration of all the world as its daily charts and reports embrace not only the United States but the whole of the northern hemisphere, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope. Now I think that any calm mind can only say for Father that he had the clearness of foresight to foresee what could be done for the land with the aid of regular stations and the telegraph, but we can’t in the smallest degree say that its practical success is due to him. In the future, General Myer will have that credit. Father’s reputation must rest on his work at sea and a biography can only speak of other things as indications of his clear and far-seeing mind. The world is full of similar cases in all great improvements, and the world invariably gives the credit not to the man who first thought of them but to the man who puts the ideas into practise”.