Charles Fitzhugh Talman

“ If the conditions of life at these high-level stations are such as to repel any but the ardent lover of science, the same is true in even greater measure of those endured by the little band of meteorologists who man the observatory maintained by the government of Argentina at Laurie Island, in the South Orkneys, on the verge of the Antarctic. Every year a party of four is sent out from Buenos Aires to spend a year of exile in this inhospitable spot, which is generally ice-bound, and has not even wireless communication with the rest of the world. ”

“ The weather also affects the buying moods of people. A dark, dreary day in summer seems to influence humans to take on the same cast as the atmosphere. They are grouchy and hard to please. On the other hand, a cold day in winter has the opposite effect. The warmth and cheer of the store is such a pleasant contrast to the out-of-doors that shoppers like to linger over the wares and indulge themselves more readily in the luxury of buying. ”

“ Not so many generations ago 'natural philosophers' thought that inflammable gases, exhaled from the earth, took fire spontaneously in the air, and that this was lightning. The idea also prevailed—and it is not yet quite extinct—that a stroke of lightning involved the hurling down from the sky of a mass of rock, called a 'thunderbolt.' In the eighteenth century people became quite familiar with the process of generating, by friction, a mysterious something called 'electricity,' which, when it passed from one body to another through a small layer of intervening air, produced sparks. ”

“ It supplies heat, light and power—and a thousand and one useful by-products—and it is an ever-present, ever-fruitful subject of public and private discussion. We average folk know something of the varied uses of coal in the big affairs of the world, but we know it more intimately and vitally in the forms in which it ministers to our own personal welfare. Coal, in our everyday—and night—life, means heat and light. ”

“ The physiological effects of flight and altitude have added a new chapter to the science of medicine. Seasickness has been the crux of the ship’s doctor; will “air sickness” prove equally baffling? What are the therapeutic possibilities of flying? Will physicians advise their patients to seek a “change of air” vertically instead of horizontally?
The atmosphere, once monopolized by the birds, has become the abode of man. That is one excellent reason why everybody should acquire a knowledge of meteorology—the science of the air. ”

“ Were it possible for the lump of coal that we burn in our stove, grate or furnace to tell its story, it would take us back millions of years to a time when vast areas of the earth’s surface were covered with swamps, supporting a luxuriant vegetation. No human being, mammal or bird yet existed. ”

“ Air and water together contain, in their oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, and carbon, all the major constituents of our foods in unlimited abundance. It is tantalizing to think of the slow and roundabout way in which these things are wrought into edible shape—and the prices we have to pay for them. No less tantalizing, when coal is scarce and costly, is the thought that every vagrant breeze is laden with the carbon dioxide from which the chemistry of living plants so readily extracts the chief element of fuels. ”

“ Take courage then, you timid ones, who wince in the lightning's flash and tremble under the thunder's roll. Thunder is simply a vibration of your ear drums—and, when you hear the thunder, be assured, all danger is over. ”

“ ATMOSPHERIC OPTICS When we look up into the sky on a cloudless day we behold a continuous canopy, the prevailing color of which is blue. This canopy is a veil that hides the starry hosts beyond, and its presence seems, at first sight, incompatible with the fact that the air is a transparent medium. We see the stars by night through the same intervening atmosphere. Why are they cut off from our sight by day? ”

“ Which means that we would be better off in health if we could accustom ourselves to less heat; if we could live as the people of some other nations do—comfortable and content with heat enough to take the chill off the air, and not demanding that we shall be “kept going” by means of artificial heat outside of our own natural heat-giving apparatus. We make caloric cripples of ourselves by giving crutches to nature in the form of roaring furnaces and hissing steam pipes. Fresh cold air is better for us than hot air—in winter as well as in summer. ”

“ At the office of the Weather Bureau in Washington there is a [Pg 2] meteorological library of some thirty-five thousand volumes. But meteorological libraries are rare; meteorological books are scarce in other libraries; and meteorologists are so uncommon that whoever declares himself one is likely to be asked, "What is a meteorologist?"
The "meteors" studied by the meteorologist are not shooting stars, but the phenomena of the atmosphere,—rain and snow, cloud and fog, wind and sunshine, and whatever else enters into the composition of weather and climate. ”

“ It is inconceivable that man, who is every day achieving new miracles in the conquest of nature, should not eventually find a way of regulating the rainfall and sunshine that are of such vital importance to his crops, the winds that must be reckoned with in his voyages by sea and air, and the various other elements of weather that have so much to do with his happiness and welfare. ”

“ It would be necessary to go to some length to explain the familiar electrical manifestations of the thunderstorm—some points, indeed, are not perfectly clear to meteorologists—but it should be stated that these are always the result, not the cause, of the storm. Lightning is an electrical discharge between cloud and earth, or cloud and cloud, and thunder is simply the violent soundwave set up by the sudden expansion of the heated air along the path of the discharge,—the same acoustic phenomenon that accompanies an ordinary explosion. ”

“ I do not advocate giving up heat—suddenly. But letting up gradually on artificial heat, I do most earnestly advocate. Most of us live an over-heated existence—to the depletion of our health. The steam pipe, like a huge python, is closing its coils about us, and gradually stifling our native vital resources. ”

“ The ocean of air in which human beings live, even as deep-sea fishes live at the bottom of the liquid ocean, is called the atmosphere. Unlike the liquid ocean, it diminishes rapidly in density from the bottom upward. At an altitude of three and one-half miles it is only half as dense as at sea-level. This is higher than the highest permanent habitations of man. Mountain-climbers and balloonists have attained greater altitudes; but above a level of about five miles the air is too greatly rarefied to support life. Balloonists who ascend still higher must carry a supply of oxygen with them. ”

“ The promptness with which a piece of stale bread becomes moldy in a damp atmosphere is one of many proofs of the omnipresence in the atmosphere of the microscopic spores of fungi, ready to propagate their species with amazing rapidity as soon as they light upon a suitable nutrient medium. Last, but not least, bacteria, the most minute of all known organisms—so small that thousands or millions of them clustered together would make a mass not larger than the head of a pin—swarm in the air, as they do in water, the soil, and the bodies of animals. ”

“ His first indication that something is wrong is, as a rule, either an increase or a decrease of speed that is not counteracted by the accustomed movements of the controls. A period of wild suspense and utter bewilderment now follows, during which the pilot makes violent efforts to recover control, but without success. The next thing that he realizes, if he realizes anything at all, is that he is either on his back or spinning, and the next thing he knows is that he is out of the clouds with the earth standing up at a ridiculous angle and spinning round like a drunken dinner plate. ”

“ In contrast to the uncertainty that still prevails in the scientific world on the subject of climatic changes is the confidence with which the average layman may be heard to assert that such changes have taken place within his own recollection. The popular idea that climate has changed perceptibly within a single human lifetime is a world-wide delusion, and one that has, apparently, always flourished. In the United States we hear of the “old-fashioned winter,” with its unlimited sleighing, and also of a marked increase or falling off in the rainfall in certain districts. ”

“ As was once pointed out by the late Professor Simon Newcomb, the effect of a violent explosion upon a body of moist air a quarter of a mile distant is about the same as that which the clapping of one’s hands would produce upon the moist air of the room in which the experiment is performed. Again, if we stand in the steam escaping from a teakettle and clap our hands we shall not produce a shower, though we jostle the water drops much more than the explosion does at a distance of a quarter of a mile. ”

“ Few people realize the multiplicity and complexity of climates. It is a common occurrence for a prospective traveler or a business man to write to a meteorological establishment requesting, for example, a description of the climate of South America. Of course, no such thing exists. A continent does not have a climate, but a multitude of climates. Even to set forth, in general terms, the more important types of climate that prevail between Cape Horn and Panama is no small undertaking. Moreover, general descriptions often fail to supply the needs of those who make inquiries about climate. ”