It cannot be considered strange that many persons who apply to the Central Office, expressing their willingness to act as observers, decline to act when they learn from our circulars what their duties will be even while only preparing themselves as volunteers for the much more extended and laborious duties of volunteer observer. At the same time, in view of the above given mere outline of the work that is to be done in this service without instruments, it will readily be granted that this work must be essential in all meteorological study, and indeed of greater importance than a mere column of thermometer and barometer readings. When it is considered that these phenomena generally are the least extensive geographically, and also embrace the most seriously destructive ones, we doubt not that all will consider the position invariably held by the Iowa Weather Service to be, practically both wise and sound.

The following is the list of the volunteers of the Service at present:

The following have also volunteered, but have not yet fulfilled the conditions necessary for enrollment:

In from four to ten months the volunteer will have sufficiently mastered the details of the work enumerated in the preceding section to be advanced to the rank of a volunteer observer.

Before his desire to be so ranked can be gratified, it is necessary that he should give the Director of the service proper assurances that the Station will be reasonably permanent in his own charge, and he must also promise that he will earnestly try to find and to train a successor if for any reason he should wish to discontinue the observations or remove from the place. Besides it is necessary that the volunteer have trained a member of his family or some reliable neighbor to attend properly to the observations during any temporary absence or disability.

When these conditions have been complied with, the request of the volunteer will be granted, and his name will be enrolled in the list of VOLUNTEER OBSERVERS of the Service.

The duties of the volunteer observer are the same as those of the volunteer, with the addition of regular instrumental observations. These are, in the order of importance and the succession in which they are taken up: measurement of rain-fall and determination of the temperature of the air; thereafter observation of relative humidity, evaporation, and pressure. The instruments required for this purpose are: Rain-gauge, thermometer in shade, wet bulb thermometer, evaporimeter, and barometer. In addition it is recommend to obtain a wind-vane with force plate soon after the rain-gauge.

With the exception of the barometer, which, contrary to general opinion, is the least important instrument in climatological studies, these instruments will be furnished by the service to such volunteer observers as desire not to procure instruments of their own, upon the following conditions:

The volunteer observer must promise to keep the instruments in good order, and hold them subject to recall by the Director in case of continued incomplete report or discontinuance of observations. Furthermore, the instruments are not to be use in behalf of any other meterological service but this State Service. When the volunteer observer shall have completed one lustrum, (five years, beginning on 1 or 6,) and furnished the Central Office the corresponding five, fully reduced, yearly report for each instrumental reading for at least the noon observation, the instrument will be considered the property of the observer, except that it shall not be used in behalf of any other service; in case it be so used, it shall be returned to the Central Station.

While these simple and certainly fair rules govern this part of the work of the Service, it has thus far been impossible to enforce them in all cases, a fact very largely owing to the impossibility of proper inspection of stations, to which reference will be made further on.

It must also be borne in mind that instruments are furnished only so far as the means at disposal allow it, and so far as the returns from the stations prove the observer competent to use the same to advantage. In this regard, plainly and well written reports, accurately summed up, are above all necessary. Finally, the instruments are furnished only in the order stated, namely rain-gauge, thermometer with shade, psychrometer (dry and wet bulb thermometers) with shade, evaporimeter.

The first general distribution of instruments was made in early summer. The following gives a list to date:

OBSERVER.