Report on Professor Whewell’s Anemometer, now in Operation 
at Plymouth. By Mr. Snow Harris, F.R.S., &e. 
[ With a Plate.] 
Any one who has at all considered the nature and object of 
Whewell’s Anemometer will readily admit of how great value 
to Meteorology the results of its indications must prove ;—since 
they put us in possession of a sort of figurative delineation of 
the total amount of the aerial current in any direction; and fi- 
nally enable us to arrive at what Mr. Whewell has not unaptly 
termed an annual type of the winds for any given place :—by 
comparing the types of different places with each other, the 
general annual movement of the atmosphere may be in some 
degree ascertained. 
The want of an instrument which could figure at once the di- 
rection and proportionate velocity of a given current, so as to 
obtain an integral result, has been long felt in Meteorology. 
Common anemometers merely register the time of agiven wind 
from a certain point, and leave its velocity out of the question ; 
and although others of a more improved kind register also its 
pressure on a given area, yet there are none, so far as I know, 
which give the complete aud truly valuable result obtained from 
Mr. Whewell’s, viz. the total quantity or integral effect of the 
wind at a given place. 
Impressed with the great importance of such a result to Me- 
teorology, I have frequently, since the Anemometer was entrusted 
to my care, given attention to the difficulties in its practical 
working, and have endeavoured to render it more easily ma- 
nageable by ordinary observers. The objections hitherto made 
to the use of this machine are not altogether without founda- 
tion. They principally apply to the difficulty of obtaining in- 
struments which may be taken as sufficiently comparable ; to 
the want of constancy in the operation of the same instrument, 
owing to deterioration in the wheel-work from various causes ; 
to the liability of the machine to become damaged in storms ; 
and to the difficulty of repair. 
Mr. Southwood, who attended to the Register of the instru- 
ment for some time, and who communicated the results at the 
Meeting of the Association held at Liverpool, in 1837, made seve- 
ral valuable improvements in its construction. We have not until 
