SKETCH OF NIELS H. C. HOFFMEYER. 117 



for a district extending from 63 east to 60 west longitude, and 

 from 30 to 75 north latitude, whence accurate information was 

 seldom obtainable by telegraph in western Europe. Although 

 these charts did not at first repay the outlay made upon them, 

 they were so well received by the meteorologists of Europe as to 

 encourage their continuance. Their scope was enlarged in 1875, 

 in accordance with the advice of the directors of various central 

 institutions, so as to embrace a more considerable part of the 

 globe, and give some idea of the distribution of temperature. 

 Mercator's projection was discarded, in order to avoid the exag- 

 gerations of dimensions in northern regions ; and other improve- 

 ments in detail were made. These synoptical charts, giving ob- 

 servations made three times a day in Denmark, Faroe, Iceland, 

 and Greenland, were continued for more than three years, or 

 till November, 1876, at Captain Hoffmeyer's personal expense. 

 Arrangements had been made in the summer of 1883 to resume 

 the publication, in conjunction with Neumayer, and the first 

 sheets of the new series were printed on the day after that of 

 Hoffmeyer's death. 



Captain Hoff meyer was a worker in meteorology rather than 

 a writer of papers and books on the subject. The service that he 

 did is best seen in the organization of a system of stations at 

 intervals across the ocean wherever his country had jurisdiction ; 

 in the conception of his synoptical charts ; in the regular publi- 

 cation of the Meteorological Bulletin of Denmark, described in 

 Nature as in several respects among the best that reached it ; 

 and in his co-operation in the formation and movement of the 

 International Meteorological Congress. He was one of the secre- 

 taries of the meeting at Rome in 1876 ; and was a member, ap- 

 pointed by the Vienna Congress of 1873, and a secretary of the 

 Conference for Maritime Meteorology that met in London in 

 1874. He also made some valuable literary contributions to the 

 science. Among these are his papers on the Greenland Foehn, 

 1877, and on the distribution of atmospheric pressure in winter 

 over the North Atlantic, and its influence on the climate of Eu- 

 rope, 1878. The former of the papers related to the sudden changes 

 of temperature which mark the winter climate of Greenland, 

 under which the mean temperatures of that season sometimes 

 vary almost as much as 23 C. in different years, and Upernavik 

 is sometimes as warm during the darkness of the polar night 

 as the south of France. Sudden and sharp changes often occur 

 several times in the course of the same month ; and the rises 

 always stand in connection with a veering of the wind to south- 

 east and east. The phenomenon of a warm wind blowing from 

 an interior which is covered with snow and ice has then to be 

 accounted for. The older authors, to explain the paradox, re- 



