uary 29, 1817. We are fortunate in having from his own hands a record of his early years. At the request of Mr. A. McAdie, of the Signal Service, Prof. Ferrel wrote, in 1887, an account of his life, and from this Mr. McAdie prepared a biographical sketch that was published in the American Meteorological Journal for February, 1888. The same journal for December, 1891, contains several notices of Ferrel's works by Newcomb, Abbe, and others, read at the October meeting of the New England Meteorological Society. A list of his published writings is given in the Journal for October of the same year. The manuscript autobiography has been presented by Mr. McAdie to the Library of Harvard College, and the following account of Ferrel's youth is prepared from it. Although never widely known, even among our scientific men, his work since his fortieth year gives a record of the latter part of his life; and for that reason the narrative of his earlier years is here given more fully. It is one that may certainly inspire young men who labor under discouragement; and perchance it may also lead the more generous of our readers to seek out and lend a helping hand to those whose lines are hard and who are working earnestly to help themselves; not that all such shall become Academicians, but that well-timed help extended in such directions is the best investment that a man can make for himself and for his country.
Ferrel's father was of Irish and English descent; his mother came from a German family. They lived in a simple way in the country, and the boy went to a common district school. In 1829 the family moved across the narrow western arm of Maryland into Berkeley County, Virginia (now West Virginia). There the son was kept closely at work, except while at school for two winters, the school-house being a rude log cabin, in which he went "through the arithmetic and the English grammar," and then remained out of school till 1839. Having mastered his school-books, he had nothing further to study except a weekly newspaper, the Virginia Republican, published at Martinsburg; this he waited for eagerly, to read its occasional scientific items.
While thus engaged on the farm young Ferrel saw somewhere a copy of Park's Arithmetic, with a sketch of mensuration at its close. Of this he writes: "At the sight of the diagrams I was at once fired with an intense desire to have the book. But I had no money, and at this time I was too diffident to ask my father for even a half-dollar, or to let him know that I wanted the book. Soon afterward I earned fifty cents in the harvest-field of one of the neighbors, and with this I determined to buy the book. The first time I had a chance to go to Martinsburg I inquired for it at a store, but learned that its price was sixty-two cents. I told the store-keejDer I had only fifty cents, and so he let me have it at
