Another instance of its use with which we are acquainted, is at the London office in St. Paul's Churchyard of the _Draper's Record_, one of the largest in circulation of any trade paper in the world. The citizen of London may see displayed from its roof by private enterprise the whole of the forecasts issued by the Meteorological Office, viz., the 11 a.m., the 3.30 p.m., and the 8.30 p.m. for the South of England, which officially includes St. Paul's Churchyard. A white flag is hoisted for clear weather, a blue one for rain, while local showers are prognosticated by a flag half blue and half white. Changeable weather is indicated by a flag like Fig. 267, and a coming fog by a yellow flag with black ball in its centre, like Fig. 258. Snow is foretold by a flag like Fig. 278, and squally weather by a swallow-tailed flag, having its upper half black, and the lower white. A plain red triangular flag is used to indicate temperature; when this is hoisted above other flags, it indicates rising temperature; when placed below, falling temperature; and when omitted we are to conclude that things are stationary. Thus the red flag, then below it the white one, and then the blue hoisted together, would mean that we might expect warmer weather, at first fair, but succeeded by rain, while the blue flag above the red would indicate that wet weather was before us, and a fall of temperature. At the 1894 meeting of the National Rifle Association at Bisley a system of this kind was inaugurated, in order to give those in camp an idea of the weather that might be expected for the ensuing twelve hours, the hoisting of a blue flag indicating fine weather or moderate wind, a red one foretelling stormy weather or strong wind; green, pointing to unsettled weather or gusty wind, and a yellow flag indicating thunder or rain storms. For shooting purposes a knowledge of the strength of the wind is very valuable. {136} The development of a code of flag signals seems to have exercised a great fascination on many minds, and the result has been that until the general adoption of the International code things had got into a somewhat chaotic state. Some systems had many excellent points in them, while others broke down under the strain of practical use. In some cases, too, the claims of patriotism influenced the choice, it being difficult for an Englishman or an American to believe that the scheme of a Frenchman or German could possibly be better than the home-grown article. The systems best known in this country are the Admiralty codes of 1808, 1816, and 1826, Lynn's in 1818, Squire's in 1820, Raper's in 1828, Philipps' in 1836, Eardley Wilmot's in 1851, the code of Rogers, the American, in 1854, the French code of Reynolds in 1855, and the system devised by Marryat in 1856, all being superseded by that of the Board of Trade.