1916] Illusions of the Upper Air 603 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, March 10, 1916. 



The Right Hon. Lord Rayleigh, O.M. P.O. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., 



in the Chair. 



Sir Napier Shaw, M.A. LL.D. Sc.D. F.R S. M.R.L, 

 Director of the Meteorological Office. 



Illusions of the Upper Air. 



When the year of grace 1916 comes to an end half a century will 

 have elapsed since a daughter was born to Neptune in the temple of 

 Athene. Her name was the Meteorological Committee of the Royal 

 Society. In more conventional language, the Board of Trade, acting 

 on behalf of the Government, with the concurrence of the Admiralty, 

 came to an understanding with the Royal Society for the scientific 

 study of the weather in the interest of shipping for the benefit of 

 the public and at its expense. I propose to review the progress of 

 meteorological theory in England in the fifty years. 



The Formation of the MeteoroJogiccd Committee of the 

 Royal Society. 



By that understanding two lines of investigation, the study of 

 weather-maps on the one hand, which was a public duty, and, on the 

 other, the study of automatic meteorological records, which was a 

 private enterprise, were brought together. 



The public duty belonged to the Meteorological Department of 

 the Board of Trade, which had been created in 1854, on the recom- 

 mendation of an international maritime conference, initiated by 

 Lieutenant Maury, of the United States Navy, for the study of the 

 Meteorology of the Sea. It was dependent for its funds partly upon 

 the Admiralty in the interest of the Navy, and partly upon the Board 

 of Trade in the interest of the Mercantile Marine. To its original 

 programme of compiling statistics of all oceans for the use of sailors 

 had been added, through the instrumentahty of the British Associa- 

 tion, with the Prince Consort as President, the collection of daily 

 reports by telegraph from stations on the British and French coasts 

 for the study of weather, particularly of cyclonic storms, which caused 

 great damage to shipping. 



Thus, while the public meteorological services of most countries 



