266 SCIENTIFIC RECORD FOR 1884. 



Leipsic has, under his management, already shown increased vitality 

 and usefulness. 



26. He has begun the publication of a monthly report in a slightly 

 condensed form, but containing much appropriate and instructive mat- 

 ter, which is arranged in the following divisions : (a) Eesults by dec- 

 ades and months for 11 stations ; (b) average variability of the weather 

 in Saxony; (c) weather review for Europe; {d) normal weather in 

 Leipsic for the month ; (e) veritications of the predictions for the month 

 given separately for each locality. There are several features in this 

 weather review especially worthy of commendation ; thus the use of 

 decades in addition to the months is a step which has been for some 

 time past adopted by the meteorological institutes of the Netherlands 

 and Italy and the German Seewarte. These are more convenient than 

 Dove's pentades, which are in fact only specially applicable to the 

 rapid change in temperature. {D. M. Z., i, 417 and 285.) 



27. [The Signal Service in 1870 adopted a form which made it conven- 

 ient to reckon by we. kly averages from Sunday to Saturday throughout 

 the year, and a number of tables of this kind were prepared; but very 

 little was, however, given to the scientific world in this form ; in fact, 

 the weekly form was itself adopted almost entirely for executive rea- 

 sons, and was replaced in 1881 by a much more convenient monthly form, 

 in which the division and summation by decades is very easily made, 

 although it seems improbable that it will ever be practicable to publish 

 the enormous mass of signal service data in this extreme detail.] 



28. Prof. M. Merino, well known as the author of a memoir on the 

 climate of Madrid, has been appointed as director of the Observatory of 

 that city, and has published with unexpected promptness the volumes 

 of Spanish observations for the years 1876 to 1882, which publication 

 had fallen in arrears, owing to successive changes since the death of 

 the former director, Aguilar. The number of meteorological stations 

 has been more than doubled during the past ten years and the outfit 

 of instruments perfected. Most of the stations have means of observing 

 solar radiation, terrestrial ground temperatures, evaporation, and wind 

 velocity by Robinson's anemometer. The international forms for pub- 

 lication of climatological data have been adopted. {Z. 0. G. M., xix, 

 p. 340.) 



29. Lieut. E. von Wohlgemuth communicates the general results of the 

 Arctic expedition of the Austrian Government to the island of Jan 

 Mayen in 1882-'83. He states that no difficulty seriously interfered 

 with carrying out every point of the programme, everything being, in 

 fact, much more favorable than had been anticipated. Only once did 

 the minimum thermometer fall below — 32° C. ; the temperature most fa- 

 vorable for work was — 10° or — 15°, since with this temperature came a 

 dryness and transparency of the air, and for it clothing could be selected 

 that on the one hand protected from the cold and on the other was not 

 so heavy as to interfere with outdoor labor or provoke troublesome per- 



