by Diane Fontaine Maury-Corbin

“ So, we also begin to have a home-feeling. People are very kind, the country is beautiful, the views and the scenery lovely, and both climate and air such that exercise is enjoyment. How I wish I had you and Miss Louisa here with us! Nannie and her two children are now on their way to us — by sea — from New York. Dick (eldest son, Colonel Richard Launcelot Maury) has gone to West Virginia. Brave (youngest son, Matthew Fontaine Maury Jr,) is polishing (being educated) off at the Institute.
The seat of Empire is fast settling down in the North-West States. ”

“ The greatest difficulty in teaching these people that their best way to the sea lies through Virginia, not through Canada, is to get our people to raise funds for the gratuitous circulation of the Reports [1] in sufficient numbers between this and the next meeting of Congress in December. If we can do that, the North-West States will raise their voices in favour of the Virginia route, and demand the money to open it. When that is done, they will not want Canada, and we shall have peace. ”

“ In Maury’s enthusiastic pursuit of this favorite plan of crop and weather forecasts for the farmers, and by an extended and exhausting lecturing tour once more to urge this subject upon the farmers, in the autumn of 1872, Matthew Fontaine Maury overtaxed his strength and brought on the return of an old disorder (gout in the stomach) , from which he never rallied. ”

“ I wrote and lectured on this subject before the war, and I promised then, that if you would give me a lock of cotton from every bale, I would undertake, with that as a fund, to defray all the necessary expenses for forecasting the weather and crops for you, and to render to agriculture and the land services far more signal and valuable than those which commerce and navigation were then reaping from the Wind and Current Charts, and my researches touching the Physics of the Sea. ”

“ Description of Lexington,Va. — Maury settled in his last home — Virginia the best route to the North-West — Plans for a Map showing a caste of the atmosphere — Reaches his sixty-sixth birthday — Arrangement to deliver addresses — Meteorological survey of Virginia — Resumes his lectures on agricultural meteorology — His address delivered at Nashville, St. Louis, and Richmond — In delivering his lectures of weather forecasts for farmers M F Maury overtaxes his strength — Maury comes home to Lexington to die. ”

“ He tried, through life, never to do anything of which his conscience disapproved, and he studied, even in minutest matters, exactitude and moderation. Maury’s general knowledge was very extensive, and in his own special science he excelled above all other men. ”

“ You now also have the Agricultural Bureau, in the service of which reports embodying many of the facts and observations required are already made, or might be without any additional expense. Many of the data which these two offices seek to obtain stand somewhat in the relation of cause and effect to each other — as, for instance, a dry season and bad crops. Your fields have the same area and soil this year that they had last. Why is not their yield the same? ”

“ International Conference “ between the leading agriculturists and meteorologists of all countries, to the definite organization of a system of crop and weather forecasts. Maury pointed out the approval which it had received from the most eminent men of science in the world, and the benefits which would immediately accrue from it, and, while regretting the indifference of the Federal authorities, he urged the farmers to use their influence in its favor, in their several States. ”