604 Sir Napier Shaw [March 10, 



have their roots in the study of rainfall, and the interests of agri- 

 culture or water-supply, our own is to be referred to the study of 

 winds, and the interests of the seafaring community — to Neptune, in 

 fact. In this country the study of meteorology in relation to rainfall 

 and climate was left to private enterprise. While Admiral FitzRoy, 

 who was in charge of the Department of the Board of Trade, was 

 busy with meteorology for sailors, Mr. G. J. Symons, a member of 

 his staff, set up an independent organisation for the study of British 

 rainfall, which has proved itself a practical necessity for engineers 

 and others interested in water-supply ; and the British Association 

 had made an effective physical observatory out of the derelict Obser- 

 vatory at Richmond, which George III. had built to replace the 

 Royal Observatory at Kew, and which had been lent by the Crown 

 to the British Association in 1842. 



The men who were prominently associated with the work of the 

 Observatory fifty years ago were Sabine, De la Rue, Gassiot, Galtoa 

 and Balfour Stewart, and the most noteworthy contribution of the 

 Observatory to meteorology was the perfecting of the automatic 

 registration of the meteorological elements pressure, temperature, 

 wind and rainfall. FitzRoy felt impelled to make public the 

 interesting things that came under his notice when he plotted tele- 

 graphic reports on a map, and in like manner the meteorological 

 enthusiasts, who were at one time of the year the British Association, 

 and during the rest of it the Royal Society, were impelled to maintain 

 that the proper way of arriving at a comprehension of the weather- 

 map was by a study of such records as those of Kew Observatory. 



Rival Weather 3Iaps. 



There were, in fact, in the sixties three meteorological parties in 

 this country, the Official party, if an official can be said to be or to 

 have a party, the Rainfall party and the Kew Observatory or British 

 Association-Royal Society party. All three showed a lively interest 

 in the weather map, and were actively engaged in devising means for 

 representing the geographical distribution of weather. 



The evidence of their activity survives in the proposals for 

 weather maps of various kinds which appeared in the year 1861. 

 The first is FitzRoy's representation of the weather of the Royal 

 Charter storm of 1859, in which the variations of pressure and 

 temperature are shown by ordinates set up either along parallels of 

 latitude or along radial lines on the map ; the second is the pros- 

 pectus of " The Daily Weather Map Company, Limited," which is 

 curiously enough without any date, but which is generally associated 

 with Symons and Glaisher ; and the third, Galton's method of repre- 

 sentation propounded in a work called " Meteorographica," in which 

 the word " anticyclone " was used for the first time. 



The differences between these three attempts to represent the 



