There is much virtue in a name. A few years ago the United States Bureau of Fisheries persuaded the American public to eat dogfish by changing its name to “grayfish.” Similarly, FitzRoy induced the British public to take his weather predictions seriously by calling them “forecasts.” The name has stuck; and nowadays, throughout the English-speaking world, the expression “weather forecast”--except as applied comprehensively to predictions of the “long-range” variety--means something decidedly less chimerical than the average weather prophecy. [Illustration: THE SUN DRAWING WATER (_Photograph by P. K. Budlong._)] It is still necessary, however, to emphasize the distinction. There are probably many people among us, well above the illiterate level, who have no clear idea as to what constitutes a scientific weather forecast. The distinguishing feature of such a prediction, apart from the fact that it is made by a trained meteorologist, is that it is, in all cases, based upon a weather map. The forecasting machine is a big one, with its human gear spread over a wide territory. Eventually it will be spread over the entire globe, and then we shall have better forecasts. A little manual entitled “The Weather Map,” published by the British Meteorological Office, says: “The making of a single forecast in any one of the meteorological offices of Europe, America, Australia, or the Far East requires the organized cooperation of some hundreds of persons; about a hundred observers who note the necessary observations simultaneously at as many separate places and hand in their reports to the telegraphists who transmit them to one center, where the meteorological expert charts them on a map and draws therefrom the conclusions on which the forecasts are based. The preparation of the map is an essential part of the process. No meteorologist in the modern sense attempts to forecast the weather without reference to a map prepared either by himself or by some one with whom he is in direct communication, from observations transmitted by telegraph for the purpose. No amount of weather wisdom or weather lore or experience is a substitute for the map. The more expert and accomplished the meteorologist, the more certain he is that all he can do without the materials for constructing a map, though he may have a barometer and other instruments at hand, is to make a guess at what the map is like and think out from that what the weather changes are likely to be. It is a common experience of professional meteorologists away from their base to find themselves appealed to for an opinion about the weather, judging from the signs of the sky alone, because they are learned in such things. That is exactly what they are not. Accustomed to refer everything to a map, without one they feel themselves to be rather worse off than those who are unaccustomed to its use. A modern meteorologist thinks in maps; his language and modes of expression are formed thereby.”