Maury’s interest in land meteorology had some connection, indeed, with his particular field of research; and in the beginning this was a part of his plan for a universal system of meteorological observations. But the opposition of Great Britain led him to withdraw it from the program of matters to be considered at the Brussels Conference, under the impression that a half of a loaf was better than no loaf at all. Upon his return to America after the conference, he began almost immediately to advocate the calling of another conference to consider land meteorology. As to the connection between the meteorology of the land and the sea he wrote in his “Sailing Directions” of 1855, “The great atmospherical ocean, at the bottom of which we are creeping along, and the laws of which touch so nearly the well-being of the whole human family, embraces the land as well as the sea, and neither those laws nor the movement and phenomena of the atmosphere can be properly studied or thoroughly investigated until observations, both by land and sea, shall enable us to treat the atmosphere as a whole”. The lukewarmness of Great Britain toward such a conference, and the Crimean War into which both that country and France entered, interfered with its meeting. But Maury continued to advocate a universal system of meteorological observations for the United States. He declared that it would cost no more to extend the system to the land than it had cost to spread it over the sea, and that, should it at any time be judged expedient so to enlarge the field of his researches as to include agriculture as well as commercial meteorology, he was ready at the bidding of the Department to submit a detailed plan for its consideration. The first fruits of his system of observations, which would be reported daily by telegraph and announced in the newspapers, would be, he said, that the farmers, merchants, and public in general would know with something like certainty the kind of weather to be expected, one, two, or more days in advance. Maury addressed the United States Agricultural Society on the subject in Washington on January 10, 1856; and the question having been carried to the Agricultural Committee of the Senate, a bill was drawn in April to appropriate $20,000 to establish a system of daily observations. In June, Maury thought that Congress was disposed to enlarge on the idea and establish an Agricultural Bureau, but in August he wrote sadly that political events of a different nature had turned public attention away from meteorology and the advancement of science and directed the legislation of Congress to other subjects.