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XXXIX. On the bearing of the Barometrical and Hygrometrical 

 ObservatioTis at Hobarton and the Cape of Good Hope on the 

 general theory of the Variations of Atmospherical Phanomena. 

 By Professor Dove of Berlin'^. 



I HAD hoped to have prefaced this volume with a discussion 

 of the meteorological observations made hourly at Hobarton 

 from January 1841 to September 1848 (of which the abstracts 

 were published in 1850 in the first volume of the Hobarton 

 Observations), from the pen of Professor Dove, who had kindly 

 undertaken, at the magnctical and meteorological conference at 

 Cambridge in 1845, to participate to that extent in the reduc- 

 tion and application to theoretical conclusions, of the results of 

 the Observations at the British Colonial Observatories; but 

 M. Dove's appointment, on the death of Professor Mahlmann 

 in November 1848, to the charge of the meteorological obser- 

 vatories in the Prussian states has materially abridged the time 

 at that gentleman's disposal, and he has found himself unable 

 to complete the discussion he had undertaken for the present 

 volume without occasioning an inconvenient delay in its publi- 

 cation ; the discussion will therefore be prefixed to the fourth 

 volume ; but in the meantime Professor Dove has kindly fur- 

 nished for this volume the subjoined remarks (written in German) 

 upon the bearing which the barometrical and hygrometrical 

 observations, at the Colonial Observatories at Hobarton and the 

 Cape of Good Hope, have had on the general theory which pro- 

 fesses to explain the physical causes of the variations which we 

 observe in the atmospherical phsenomena of the globe. The 

 testimony borne by so eminent a meteorologist to the import- 

 ance and value of this portion of the observations made at the 

 British Colonial Observatories, cannot fail to be highly accept- 

 able to the Government which instituted it, and to the public 

 who have paid for these establishments, as it must be most satis- 

 factory to the officers and to their assistants, by whose patient 

 and unremitting labour facts of which the importance is thus 

 recognized have been added to the foundations of meteorological 

 science. The generalization in which M. Dove has applied them 

 is remarkable alike for its extent and its simplicity, and I am 

 glad of the opportunity of enriching this volume with so inter- 

 esting a document. 

 Woolwich, March 17, 1853. Edward Sabine. 



* From " Observations made at the Magnetical and Meteorological Ob- 

 Tatory at Hobarton, in Van Dicnien Island," vol. iii. Introduction. 



gcrvatory 



