78 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION 



branches of science are numerous and important, but the researches 

 along these lines are outside of the fundamental science of meteor- 

 ology. 



On account of these important applications every civilized nation 

 maintains a meteorological office and service responding to the 

 practical needs of the people. At the present time there are about 

 thirty larger organizations of this kind and twenty smaller. The 

 progress of the science of meteorology, as distinguished from its 

 practical applications, is largely but by no means exclusively in the 

 hands of these national organizations. This science has also been 

 fostered b)'^ meteorological societies of which the most prominent 

 are those of France, England, Scotland, the Mauritius, Austria 

 and Germany, to saj^ nothing of the societies of Mannheim and 

 New England, now defunct. Nearly every general scientific society 

 also encourages meteorology. The universities of the world have 

 in some cases organized and given special attention to meteorology ; 

 notable among these are the professorships held by Kamtz, at Dor- 

 pat; Woeikof, at St. Petersburg; Schmid, at Jena; von Bezold, 

 at Berlin; Hergesell , at Strasburg ; Lamont, at Munich ; Hann and 

 Pernter, at Vienna ; Mascart, Angot and Brillouin, at Paris ; Wm. 

 M. Davis and R. De C. Ward, at Harvard. In addition to these 

 full professorships, there are many instructors and lecturers, rep- 

 sen ting minor courses, in which climatology is taught as a part of 

 the education of a physician, an engineer or a geologist. 



The number of students who take the higher meteorological 

 courses, and especially those who make meteorology the major sub- 

 ject for the attainment of the degree of Ph. D., is very small; appar- 

 ently it does not average more than five per annum for the whole 

 world. This condition of affairs is quite remarkable in considera- 

 tion of the great importance of the science, and is to be explained, 

 partly, by reason of the difficulty of the subject, but principally by 

 the fact that the needs of the meteorological services of the world 

 have, as j^et, not been properly made known to the universities 

 and to those who provide for the support of the faculties. Asa 

 consequence the older and prominent professional meteorologists 

 are those who originally made a special study of chemistry, or as- 

 tronomy, physics, navigation, or engineering ; this gives to each 

 meteorologist a tendency to prosecute meteorological studies along 

 certain pre-determined lines of thought. There are, however, a few 

 cases in which most important work has been accomplished by those 

 who have approached the subject from the point of view of math- 



