36 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



atmosphere, upon the progress of vegetation, the prevalence of dis- 

 ease, changes of population, and migration of animals. The field of 

 observation extended from the Ural Mountains in the east to Cam- 

 bridge, in the United States, in the west ; and from Greenland and 

 Norway in the north to Rome in the south. This range included also 

 stations upon three high mountains in Bavaria and upon the summit 

 of St. Gothard. The observations of each year are summed up and 

 compared with those which precede, in copious and most laborious 

 tables of mean and extreme results, and many very interesting essays 

 upon various branches of meteorology are interspersed throughout the 

 volumes of the society. 



Unfortunately for science, the secretary, Hemmer, died in the month 

 of May, 1790, and from that time the society appears to have languished, 

 and finally to have become extinct amid the troubles and the wars of 

 the French Revolution.* 



It might be of interest to trace the progress of meteorology since 

 the days of the Palatinate Society — to recount the many improvements 

 in the instruments, the new auxiliaries impressed into its service, the 

 successive unfolding of its laws as immense masses of data came into 

 view, and the gradual passing of the subject from the care of amateurs, 

 who pursued it mostly as a pastime or matter of curious inquiry, into 

 trained hands and organized bodies maintained by liberal government 

 support. But this is not my purjaose here : with a passing glance at 

 an important guide-post erected about the year 1840 on the highway 

 of this science, I will make a single stride over all this field and come 

 at once to the problem proposed to the meteorologist of the present 

 day, and the means at his command for its solution. 



The writer of this guide to the way beyond gives in clear-cut out- 

 line all that has since been realized both in this country and England. 

 After stating the necessity of making observations on land coordinate 

 with those at sea, in order to study the atmosphere in its entirety, he 

 uses these prophetic words : " This extension of the system landward 

 was proposed in the beginning as a part of the original plan. I have 

 never ceased to advocate it since, and to couple with it a system of 

 daily weather reports through the telegraph. As much as we have 

 accomplished at sea, more yet can be accomplished through the mag- 

 netic telegraph on the land. With a properly devised system of me- 

 teorological observations to be made at certain stations wherever the 

 telegraph spreads its meshes, and to be reported daily by telegrams to 

 a properly organized ofiice, the shipping in the harbors of our seajoort 

 toMTis, the husbandman in the field, and the traveler on the road, may 

 all be warned of every extensive storm that visits our shores, and while 

 yet it is a great way off. The laurels to be anticipated from such 

 extension of our beautiful field of research would crown the results 



* For these particulars of the Society of the Palatinate I am indebted to the valuable 

 treatise on meteorology by the late Professor John Frederick Dauiell, of England. 



