The bill was still pending, however, in the Senate early in 1857, and the details of Maury’s plan were presented in Senator Harlan’s report, made on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture. The following extract from this report will indicate to what extent those who afterwards established the United States Weather Bureau were indebted to Maury’s plan: “It is believed that the Superintendent of the Observatory can obtain the necessary coöperation to enable him to subject the atmosphere to this system of research by an appeal to the farmers similar to that made to the mariners, if the Government will furnish appropriate instruments and defray the expense of transmitting this intelligence to the Hydrographical Office. In order that these observations might be reliable, the instruments with which they are to be made must be correct. An appropriation of a small sum of money would be necessary for the purchase of a few standard sets, to be distributed among the states and territories, for use and comparison, under suitable regulation to be prescribed by the Secretary of the Navy. It would be highly desirable, also, to be able to receive from all parts of the country daily reports by telegraph. In this way, the condition of the atmosphere in every part of the country, the presence of a storm in any quarter, its direction, its force, and the rapidity of its march could be known at every point any hour of the day; simultaneous reports from the various stations of the character of the weather, being received and combined at the central office, could not fail to afford results of the highest interest and advantage to every industrial pursuit. Storms, having their origin in one part of the world and taking up their line of march for another, may be thus narrowly watched by the mariner in communication with the land, in many instances for days before they would reach his shipping. Being forewarned, he could adopt the necessary means to evade their fury. The same intelligence thus communicated to the farmer and out-door laborer would be equally useful in its results. Every intelligent farmer, who is willing to note his observations, would become a sentinel on the watch-tower to admonish his fellow-laborers in the fields, as well as his co-laborers on the sea engaged in carrying his produce to distant markets, of approaching foul weather and consequent danger; and it is confidently maintained by those whose opinions are entitled to the greatest weight that with such a system of observation the laws that govern the course of those storms would soon be so well known that, in most cases, shipmasters and out-door laborers could be forewarned of their approach. Lieutenant Maury has also suggested that by mapping the skies, for example, of the United States, and adopting a system of signs and symbols, these telegraphic observations may be so projected on this map as to convey to the observer at a glance a knowledge of