xlv 
have been described as “the highest value to meteorology, and as the 
only channel through which any specific practical information can be 
obtained in this most interesting department of physics.” 
This is no ordinary praise. It is the just tribute of one who is 
worthy to offer it; one, who at the call of the British Association, has 
conducted at Plymouth a still more extensive series of similar obser- 
vations, and has added to them hourly comparisons of the temperature 
and moisture of the air, and an hourly record of barometric oscillations. 
Mr. Snow Harris has presented in a few pages of our last report, the 
precious results of (70,000) observations, and thus rendered them 
immediately available in the foundations of accurate meteorology. 
The documents thus patiently collected, are, however, not yet ex- 
hausted in value; they may be again and again called into the court of 
science, and made to yield testimony to other, and as yet, unsuspected 
truths. They must not be lost. Shall we lay them by in manuscript 
among other unconsulted records of the past labours of men, or by un- 
dertaking their publication, do justice to our workmen, and establish a 
new claim on the imitation of the present, and the gratitude of future 
days? This question is of serious import. Already, stimulated by 
success in thermometric registration, we have set to work on a more 
perplexing problem; we have resolved to bind even the wandering 
winds in the magic of numbers. While we speak, the beautiful engines 
of our Whewells and Oslers are tracing at every instant of time, the 
displacements of the atmosphere at Cambridge, at Plymouth, at Bir- 
mingham, in Edinburgh, in Canada, in St. Helena, and at the Cape of 
Good Hope ; and ere long we may hope to view associated in one dia- 
gram, the simultaneous movements of the air over Europe, America, 
Africa, India, and Australia, recorded with instruments which we have 
chosen, by men whom we have set to work, 
Amongst the causes which tend to retard the progress of science, 
few, perhaps, operate more widely than the impediment to a free and 
rapid communication of thought and of experiments, occasioned by 
difference of language. It appeared to the British Association, that 
this impediment might in some degree be removed, as far as regards 
our own country, by procuring, and causing to be published, transla- 
tions of foreign scientific memoirs judiciously selected. Accordingly 
at each of the meetings at Newcastle and Birmingham a grant was 
placed at the disposal of a committee appointed to carry this purpose 
into effect. Aided by several contributions which have been gratui- 
tously presented to them, the committee have been enabled in the two 
last years, to publish translations of fourteen memoirs on subjects of 
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