484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Hitherto, weather-science has depended solely on the study of these 

 terrestrial effects as they vary under varying conditions. Modern 

 meteorological research is confined to the record and study of the 

 actual condition of the weather from day to day at selected stations 

 in different countries. It cannot be denied that the inquiry has not 

 been attended with success. At vast expense, millions of records of 

 heat, rainfall, winds, clouds, barometric pressure, and so on, have been 

 secured ; but hitherto no law has been recognized in the variations 

 thus recorded no law, at least, from which any constant system of 

 prediction for long periods in advance can be deduced. 



On this point I shall quote, first, a remarkable saying of Sir W. 

 Herschel's, which appears to me, like many such sayings of his, to be 

 only too applicable to the present state of science. In endeavoring to 

 interpret the laws of weather, "we are in the position," Herschel re- 

 marks, " of a man who hears at intervals a few fragments of a long 

 history related in a prosy, unmethodical manner. A host of circum- 

 stances omitted or forgotten, and the want of connection between the 

 parts, prevent the hearer from obtaining possession of the entire his- 

 tory. Were he allowed to interrupt the narrator, and ask him to ex- 

 plain the apparent contradictions, or to clear up doubts at obscure 

 points, he might hope to arrive at a general view. The questions that 

 we would address to Nature are the very experiments of which we are 

 deprived in the science of meteorology." 



The late Prof. De Morgan, indeed, selected meteorology as the 

 subject on which, above all others, systematic observations had been 

 most completely wasted as a special instance of the failure of the 

 true Baconian method (which, be it noticed, is not, as is so commonly 

 supposed, the modern scientific method). " There is an attempt at in- 

 duction going on," says De Morgan, "which has yielded little or no 

 fruit, the observations made in the meteorological observatories. This 

 attempt is carried on in a manner which would have caused Bacon to 

 dance for joy " (query) ; " for he lived in times when chancellors did 

 dance. Russia, says M. Biot, is covered by an army of meteorographs, 

 with generals, high officers, subalterns, and privates, with fixed and 

 defined duties of observation. Other countries, also, have their sys- 

 tematic observations. And what has come of it? Nothing, says M. 

 Biot, and nothing will ever come of it : the veteran mathematician and 

 experimental philosopher declares, as does Mr. Ellis " (Bacon's biog- 

 rapher), " that no single branch of science has ever been fruitfully ex- 

 plored in this way." A special interest attaches, I may remark, to the 

 opinion of M. Biot, because it was given upon the proposal of the French 

 Government to construct meteorological observatories in Algeria. 



It is well known that our Astronomer Royal holds a similar opin- 



this rain before the clouds from the southwest have reached us. More commonly, how- 

 ever, drought in England is due to the delay of the downfall, in consequence of the 

 clouds from the southwest travelling at a greater height than usual. 



