3 io SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Copley Medal of the Royal Society, of which he was also a foreign member ; he 

 was a member of the Institute of France and the Academy of Sciences of 

 Petrograd. His researches on immunity brought him the Nobel Prize, and only a 

 fortnight before his death he was awarded the Albert Medal of the Society of 

 Arts to mark the benefit he had conferred on mankind by his researches. It is 

 hard to measure in true perspective the value of a great man so recently among 

 us, but it would appear that much as he was honoured in his life, posterity will 

 accord him a still higher place in the list of those who have given of their 

 best for their fellow men. 



To the memory of a great genius and a large-minded man we wish to pay 

 a humble tribute of respect. 



Chas. H. O'Donoghue. 



Dr. R. H. Scott, F.R.S. 



The first holder of a new and special post is frequently hard to replace, and the 

 problem faced by the Board of Trade in 1865, on the death of Admiral FitzRoy, 

 the " father " of British Official Meteorology, was further complicated by the fact 

 that, during the ten years since his appointment by Mr. Cardwell as Director of 

 the new Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, FitzRoy had far 

 exceeded his instructions. Gifted with energy, enthusiasm, and imagination, he 

 had allowed the original programme, the compilation of marine meteorology from 

 ships' logs, to fall into arrear, while he initiated daily weather reports in i860, and 

 forecasts and storm warnings in 1861, these last depending principally on empirical 

 rules of his own. On his death the Government requested the Royal Society to 

 report on the matter, the forecasts being continued meanwhile by Mr. Babington, 

 the senior clerk in the department, who was familiar with FitzRoy's methods. 

 The Royal Society appointed a committee with the President, Gen. Sir Edward 

 Sabine, as chairman, and by December 1866 they had decided that the forecasts, 

 not being founded on a truly scientific basis, should cease for the time, and that a 

 better scheme for the Office would be to extend land meteorology by the founda- 

 tion of several more observatories in the British Isles, after the model of Kew, at 

 the same time continuing the Marine branch and the daily weather report. The 

 Board of Trade accepted the decision and arranged to hand over the department, 

 with an annual subvention of ^10,000 for expenses, to the control of an unpaid 

 Committee of the Royal Society. The forecasts were stopped at once, and Mr. 

 Babington was immediately transferred to another department. In January 1867 

 the new Meteorological Committee met and appointed Robert Henry Scott as 

 Director, Captain Toynbee as Marine Superintendent, and Prof. Balfour Stewart 

 (Director of Kew Observatory) as Secretary to the Committee. Mr. Simmonds, 

 next in seniority to Mr. Babington, and the only man left in the Office with any 

 experience of FitzRoy's methods, remained in charge only until the new Director 

 arrived. Both of these clerks naturally preferred to continue in the Civil Service. 

 It had thus been left practically to Sir E. Sabine to find a successor for FitzRoy, 

 and he, obviously desiring an effective contrast, might be expected to choose a 

 methodical man of little or no imagination. 



Scott was born in 1833. His father was James Smyth Scott, Q.C., and his 

 maternal grandfather the Hon. Charles Brodrick, Archbishop of Cashel. One of 

 his brothers was headmaster of Westminster, and another Vicar of Bray and 

 Archdeacon of Dublin ; so that his family was by no means obscure. He was 

 educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Dublin, where he was Classical Scholar 

 in 1853, and graduated as Senior Moderator in Experimental Physics in 1855. 



