The United States Weather Bureau has been a branch of the Department of Agriculture since 1890, and a very large share of its routine work is devoted to the agricultural interests of the country. The climatological statistics that it has assembled are indispensable in many departments of agricultural research, besides furnishing varied information of practical value to farmers. The Bureau has developed a number of special types of forecasts for the rural industries; such as predictions, three or four days in advance, of favorable weather for cutting alfalfa; forecasts of weather unfavorable for sheep-shearing; notices to fruit growers of dry-weather periods in which fruit trees should be sprayed; and warnings of the occasional summer showers that would do so much damage to the great raisin-drying industry of California but for the vigilance of the forecasters and the efficient arrangements made by the industry itself for disseminating and acting upon the warnings. Of course, the ordinary daily weather forecasts, storm warnings, and cold-wave warnings are valuable in many ways to agriculturists, and the Bureau has made great efforts to give such information prompt and general distribution in the rural districts. The forecasts are generally displayed in post offices, and in many cases the rural telephone exchanges are pressed into service to distribute weather information regularly to all their subscribers. Some exchanges sound a signal every morning when the forecast is ready for distribution. Lastly, the wireless telegraph and the wireless telephone, which, in the immediate future, will form part of the equipment of every up-to-date farm, afford ideal channels for the dissemination of weather news and are already extensively used for this purpose. [Illustration: A SNOW SURVEYOR AT WORK. Note the cylindrical snow sampler, with its serrated cutting edge, and spring balance for weighing the sample of snow (_Photographed by J. C. Aller._)] [Illustration: SNOW ROLLERS, OR WIND-BLOWN SNOWBALLS ON A LAWN AT POTSDAM, N. Y. (_Photographed by T. J. Moon._)] There remain to be mentioned the various steps the Weather Bureau has taken to protect the rural industries from the night frosts of spring and autumn, in the shape of special forecasting arrangements, the publication of frost charts, and a wide range of scientific investigations. The Bureau’s undertakings in this line are merely a part, though a leading one, of a great campaign of frost protection that is being carried on by scientific and official agencies in this country on a larger scale than anywhere else in the world.