2 State of the Weather cannot be Predicted, 



a nature as to modify climates accidentally, and in a very 

 sensible manner, in particular with regard to temperature. 

 I already perceive that facts w^ill answer in the affirmative. 

 I should have wished, however, not to publish this result till 

 after I had finished my investigations ; but I must frankly 

 own, that I wished to have an oppoHunity of protesting 

 decidedly against the predictions which have every year been 

 attributed to me^ both in France and in other countries. Never 

 has a word escaped my lips, either in private or in the 

 course which I have delivered for upwards of thirty years ; 

 never has a line published with my consent, authorised any 

 one to imagine it to be my opinion that it is possible, in the 

 present state of our knowledge, to announce, with any degree 

 of certainty, what weather it will be a year, a month, a week, 

 I shall even add, a single day, in advance. May the indigna- 

 tion I have felt at seeing a multitude oi ridiculous predictions 

 appear under my name, not constrain me, by the force of re- 

 action, to give an exaggerated degree of importance to the 

 disturbing causes I have enumerated ! At present, I believe 

 that I am in a condition to deduce from my investigations the 

 important result which I now announce ; Whatever may be 

 the progress of the sciences, NEVER ivill observers who are trust- 

 worthy^ and careful of their reputation^ venture to foretel the 

 state of the weather* 



* This explicit declaration may give me a right to expect that I shall no 

 longer be compelled to play the part of Nostradamus or Mathew Laensberg ; 

 but I am far from indulging in any illusion on this subject. Hundreds of per- 

 sons who have gone through a regular course of university studies, will not 

 fail, in 1846, as they had done on former occasions, to ply me with such ques- 

 tions as the following, which it is truly pitiable to hear in the present day : 

 Will the winter be severe ? Think you that we shall have a warm summer, a 

 humid autumn ? This is a very long and destructive drought ; do you think 

 it is near an end ? People think that the April moon will produce great mis- 

 chief this season — what is your opinion ? &c. &c. In spite of the little confi- 

 dence 1 have in predictions, I affirm that in this case the event will not deceive 

 me. Nay, for some years past have I not been put to a still severer proof? 

 Has not a work been published, entitled " Lectures on Astronomy, delivered at 

 the Observatory by M. Arago, collected by one of his Pupils ? " I have protested a 

 dozen times against this work ; I have shewn that it swarms with inconceivable 

 errors ; that it l9 beneath all criticism whenever the author ceases to employ 

 ills scissors on the notices of the Annuaire, and is reduced to the necessity of 



