ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON METEOROLOGY 79 



ematics and analytical mechanics, and it is along this line of inves- 

 tigation that we must expect the most important discoveries in the 

 future. No matter how diligently we prosecute our observations 

 and collect and study the observed data, yet it must always be true 

 that the fundamental laws controlling atmospheric phenomena must 

 be those of mechanics and must be investigated by those skilled in 

 mathematics. Meteorology has attained a status analogous to that 

 of astronomy in the century between Newton and La Place. It is 

 ready to receive a new leader and is looking for him. A hundred 

 experimentalists and thousands of observers are perfecting the date 

 of observation, but the crying need is for one who shall elucidate our 

 complex phenomena to the satisfaction of the students of mechanics. 

 In this search for men and the pre-eminent right man, meteorolo- 

 gists welcome the assistance of the Carnegie Institution, and your 

 committee would respectfully submit the following general recom- 

 mendations which will be supplemented by fuller details whenever 

 called for : 



1. Meteorology should be treated by you as a very broad subject, 

 always embracing the atmosphere as a whole. The Institution may 

 leave it to local observers to investigate the climatology of their 

 respective localities, embracing only one-tenth of the surface of the 

 whole globe ; the remaining nine-tenths, including the polar re- 

 gions and the high seas, are open to your investigation without ex- 

 citing international jealousies or questions of propriety. 



Meteorology should be treated as a part of terrestrial physics, the 

 other branches of which will be terrestrial magnetism, oceanogra- 

 phy, geology, vulcanology, seismolog5^ and similar matters that 

 affect the globe as a whole. If, as it is reasonable to hope, the In- 

 stitution organizes a department of research in terrestrial physics, 

 then we recommend that meteorology be given a prominent place or 

 division therein, and that the division be conducted by three per- 

 sons, namely, a mathematician, an experimental physicist, and a 

 bibliographer. 



2. It is reasonably certain that the young men , who from year to 

 year attain the degree of Ph. D., do in some cases desire to devote 

 themselves to meteorology, but at the present time so little induce- 

 ment is offered to men of high scientific talents to devote themselves 

 to this field of work that, as a matter of necessity, most of them 

 seek employment elsewhere. The Carnegie Institution will do its 

 best work for meteorology by securing the services of young 

 men who have shown already a genius for investigation in mathe- 



