56 C.C. NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 



LECTURES. 



METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS AND THEIR USES. 



By M. Llewellyn Evans, O.C. 



^'^•— n| hen we consider the vast — the universal influence that 

 III the weather and its changes and variations has upon 

 VjLl all life, animal and vegetable, we cannot fail to see that 

 \ it would be of the highest use to man to be able to 

 know with some degree of accuracy the laws that govern 

 the atmosphere, so that he might be forewarned of its changes and 

 be prepared to ward off the attendant dangers or reap the benefit of 

 the blessings bestowed thereby. For man often loses as much by 

 failing to take advantage of a beneficient change of weather, through 

 a want of preparation, as he does when some of his best work is 

 destroyed through the visitation of Nature in one of her destructive 

 moods. Until the present century, or perhaps the middle of the 

 last, practically no efiorts were made by mankind for systematic 

 observation of the weather with scientific accuracy. Shepherds, 

 sailors, and hunters, accustomed to live out of doors and read the 

 face of the sky, from long practice in observing the changes in that 

 face, have been able with some degree of accuracy to forecast, widiin a 

 few hours, coming changes, and particularly storms. But this power of 

 observation was not peculiar to these classes or exercised by them alone. 

 Other animals and some vegetables, too, were equally able to read 

 the signs of the times, and often with more accuracy and precision, 

 and much of mankind's weather lore has been culled second-hand, 

 not from his own personal observation of the atmosphere and 



