Our weather knowledge is confessedly very imperfect. It is 

 something to know the general character of these storms ; the 

 atmospheric conditions which seem to favour their occurrence, the 

 laws of their movements, and the path by which they travel to 

 this country. It is, further, a most important step to have had 

 organised the several meteorological stations which now exist in 

 different parts of this country, as well as on the continent, due in 

 the first instance to Le Verrier, the late Director of the Paris 

 Observatory — afterwards taken up by the late Admiral Fitzroy, 

 who definitely established the system here in the beginning of 

 1862 — and still doing good work, though under somewhat altered 

 arrangements. From these stations daily weather reports are 

 forwarded by electric telegraph to the chief office in London, 

 which, according to the intelligence brought, determine the issue 

 or not, to the principal ports on our coast, of storm warnings. 



Yet admirable as this system is, it does not tell us all we want 

 to know. Thoroughly to warrant the issue of these warnings and 

 to insure success, we requu-e to know the conditions of storms, 

 their rate of progress, and what changes of form and direction 

 they may be undergoing, while yet on their road to this country, and 

 before they arrive. We have no stations on the Atlantic to 

 transmit to us this information, and consequently storms are often 

 almost at our doors before we know of their existence. 



Still the warnings have their value if we look to results. Many 

 may be Avrong, but a larger number are right, and the number of 

 successful warnings would seem to be increasing. In 1874 the 

 percentage of warnings sent to our own coasts and justified by 

 subsequent gales or strong winds was 78.2 ;* in 1876 the per- 

 centage of the same had got up to 82. 



And there is further hope for Meteorology in another direction. 

 There are grounds for believing that a connection exists between 

 the meteorological phenomena that take place on our earth and 



* " Scott's Storm Warnings," p. 137. 



