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pointed master of the sloop-of-war " Falmouth," then fitting out for the Pacific. He did not com- plete his cruise in this vessel, being transferred to the schooner " Dolphin." serving as acting st lieutenant, until he was again trans- ferred to the frig- ate " Potomac," in which he returned to the United States in 1834, and pub- lished his first work, " Maury's Naviga- tion," which was adopted as a text- book in the navy. During this inter- mission of active ser- vice he married Miss Ann Herndon, of Virginia, a sister of

Lieut. William L.

Herndon, of the navy, who was conspicuous on the occasion of the foundering of the " Central Amer- ica," which he commanded. In 1837, after thir- teen years of service, Maury was promoted to the grade of lieutenant and offered the appointments of astronomer and hydrographer to the exploring expedition to the South seas, then preparing to sail under the command of Lieut. Charles Wilkes, but declined. In 1839 he met with a painful accident by which he was lamed for life. Being unable for several years to perform the active duties of his profession, he devoted the time to study, to the improvement of the navy, and to other matters of national concern. His forcibly stated views were published first and mainly in the " Southern Lit- erary Messenger," of Richmond, Va., over the pen-name of Harry Bluff, and under the general head of "Scraps from the Lucky Bag." These essays produced great reforms in the navy, and led to the foundation of a naval academy. He also advocated the establishment of a navy-yard at Memphis, Tenn., which was done by act of con- gress. Under his direction, Lieut. Robert A. Marr made at that point the first series of observa- tions on the flow of the Mississippi. He proposed a system of observations that would enable the in- vestigators to give information, by telegraph, as to the state of the river and its tributaries, to the captains of steamers and all others who might be interested. He advanced the enlargement of the Illinois and Michigan canal, that vessels of war might pass between the Gulf and the lakes. For this he received the thanks of the Illinois legisla- ture. He suggested to congress, through one of its committees, plans for the disposition of the drowned lands along the Mississippi belonging to the U. S. government. In the interest of com- merce he brought forward and successfully advo- cated, in a series of papers, what is known as the warehousing system. In 1842 he was appointed su- perintendent of the depots of charts and instru- ments at Washington, afterward known as the hydrographical office, and upon the organization and union with it of the national observatory in 1844, he was made superintendent of the com- bined institutions. To his labors as astronomer of the naval observatory he added the task of determining the direction of the winds and cur- rents of the ocean. In pursuance of these ob- jects he collected from the log-books of ships of war, long stored in the government offices, and from all other accessible sources, the material for his purpose. In 1844 he made known his conclusions respecting the Gulf stream, ocean currents, and great-circle sailing, in a paper read before the Na- tional institute, and printed under the title of "A Scheme for rebuilding Southern Commerce " (1851). They were also embodied in the " Wind and Cur- rent Charts " and "Sailing Directions " issued by the observatory. With the accumulation of ma- terial the need was felt of systematizing the ob- servations and records themselves, particularly as ships of different nations used different methods of observation and registry. Lieut. Maury ac- cordingly suggested a general maritime confer- ence, which, at the request of the U. S. govern- ment, assembled at Brussels in 1853, and recom- mended a form of abstract log to be kept on board ships-of-war and merchant vessels. The first fruits of his investigations on the winds and currents of the sea, with its currents and its atmosphere, ap- peared in 1856 in his work "The Physical Geography of the Sea," which, translated into the languages of Fi-anee, Germany, Holland, Norway, Spain, and Italy, made its author well known throughout Eu- rope. By Humboldt, Maury was declared to be the founder of a new and important science, and France, Austria, Prussia, Russia, Denmark, Belgi- um, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, Holland, Bremen, and the Papal States bestowed orders of knight- hood and other honors upon him. The academies of science of Paris, Berlin, Brussels, St. Peters- burg, and Mexico received him into membership. In his works he was the first to give a complete description of the Gulf stream, and to mark out specific routes to be followed in crossing the At- lantic. Maury also instituted the system of deep- sea sounding, and was the first to suggest the es- tablishment of telegraphic communication between the continents by cable on the bed of the ocean, and the existing cable was laid along the line indicated by him. There are letters from him to Cyrus W. Field on this subject in the observatory at Wash- ington, D. C. In 1855 he was promoted to the rank of commander. When Virginia seceded, Maury re- signed his commission in the U. S. navy, and was selected as one of a council of three to assist the governor, so serving until the army and navy of Virginia were incorporated with those of the Con- federacy. When it became known in Europe that he had "resigned from the U. S. service, he was in- vited to Russia and to France, to continue in either of those countries the work to which his life had been devoted. These offers, from a sense of duty, he declined. He entered the Confederate navy on 10 June, 1861, served on the court-martial of Capt. Josiah Tatnall, of the " Merrimac," and in October, 1862, established at Richmond the naval submarine battery service. Before the torpedo bureau was far advanced. Commander Maury was sent to Europe to continue his experiments. While abroad he in- vented an ingenious method of arranging and testing torpedo mines, which he was about to put into use at Galveston, Tex., against blockading vessels, when Gen. Lee surrendered. He had been appointed one of the Confederate navy agents in Europe, and while serving in this capacity pur- chased and fitted out armed cruisers abroad. At the close of the war, in anticipation of a large emi- gration from the southern states to Mexico, with the view of aiding his countrymen, he went to that country, and was cordially received by the Em- peror jVIaximilian, who appointed him to a place in his cabinet. Thence he was sent on a special mission to Europe. The revolution terminating his relations with Mexico, he resumed, as a means of support, his scientific and literary labors. Dur- ing this period the University of Cambridge gave