HEINRICH WILHELM DOVE. 387 



as he has been in and beyond Germany, the Father of Meteorol- 

 ogy ? What passed for meteorology, even within the memory of 

 living men, let the most popular almanacs proclaim. An attempt was 

 made in the last century (almost abortive because it was short-lived) 

 to lay a safe foundation for meteorology by introducing into it the 

 precision and co-operation which had led to such happy results in 

 astronomy ; a precision and a co-operation the more imperative and at 

 the same time the more difficult, as the physics of the Globe are more 

 complex than those of the Cosmos. The meteorological society of 

 the Palatinate, organized by Prince Charles Theodore of Mannheim, 

 supplied observers in and out of Germany with uniform instruments, 

 and published their observations in the Mannheimer Ephemeriden 

 for 1781-94. The next great awakening on this subject came from 

 Humboldt, for whom every aspect under which the physics of the 

 earth could be contemplated had a profound interest. At his word, 

 numerous meteorological observatories sprang up in the vast territories 

 of the English and Russian empires, also in Europe and America, 

 which supplied him with. materials for taking a comprehensive glance 

 at the distribution of the earth's temperature. In imitation of Hal- 

 ley's graphical method of displaying the distribution of terrestrial 

 magnetism, Humboldt constructed isothermal curves, which, by their 

 inclination to the parallels, betrayed their dependence on geographical 

 peculiarities, as well as on astronomical agencies. Dove applied the 

 same construction to each month of the year, handling, for this pur- 

 pose, vast numbers of observations, many of which required reductions 

 and corrections before they were suitable for comparison. 



When, in 1844, Dieterici had been placed at the head of the Prus- 

 sian Statistical Bureau, Humboldt called his attention to the wants of 

 meteorology, to the defects in the methods of observing, to the crude 

 condition in which observations were often left, and to the incomplete- 

 ness in the network of meteorological stations. In 1846, Dr. Mahl- 

 mann was made Director of the Meteorological Institute of Prussia ; 

 but he died in 1848, when he had only begun the needed reforms, and 

 Dove was appointed as his successor. Under Dove's administration 

 old observations were computed (those at Berlin extending back to 

 1719), affiliated posts for observers were judiciously selected and 

 gradually increased from thirty-one to one hundred and fifty-three, 

 and the results given promptly to the scientific public. 



Dove had distinctly in mind three aspects under which the condi- 

 tions of the atmosphere should be studied: 1. The mean values of 

 the elements; 2. Their periodical changes; 3. Their non-periodical 



