184 Mr J. D. FORBES on the Horary Oscillations 



But the spirit must be fostered by her Societies. " La simulta- 

 neite et la duree," says an accomplished French philosopher, 

 speaking of these bodies, " que leur institution donne a des ef- 

 forts mortels, completent la puissance de la methode experimen- 

 tale. Elles seules pouvaient desormais assurer la continuite du 

 progres des connaissances humaines ; seules elles pouvaient de- 

 velopper les grandes theories, et faire obtenir des resultats qui, 

 par leur difficulte, par la diversite, la perseverance, et 1'etendue 

 des travaux qu'ils exigent, n'auraient jamais ete accessibles pour 

 des individus *." 



20. I cannot help remarking, in conclusion, that this obser- 

 vation was never more completely verified than in the hourly 

 thermometrical observations made for some years together under 

 the auspices of this Society, at the suggestion of its late learned 

 Secretary Dr BREWSTER, which, I hesitate not to affirm, is the 

 noblest donation ever made towards the progress of meteorolo- 

 gical science f. Valuable, not merely from the specific results, 

 important as they are, which it afforded, but even more so, as 

 demonstrating the susceptibility of the science to assume a ma- 

 thematical form, and proving that the confused obscurity which 

 so long overhung the laws of mean temperature was due to the 

 imperfections of our mode of observation, not to any anomaly in 

 Nature itself, which experience daily more firmly convinces us is 

 governed by laws equally immutable, whether palpable to the 

 senses, or veiled by an indefinite series of secondary causes. 



* BIOT, Notice des operations enterprises pour determiner la figure de la terre. 

 j- The results are published in the Society's Transactions, Vol. X. 



