294 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1907. 
other languages, and exerted a profound influence upon the science 
of its day. 
Although meteorological stations were established in 1657 in Italy, 
yet academies and societies of persons interested in the special de- 
velopment of meteorology began later with the formation of the 
Meteorological Society of the Palatinate, at Mannheim, in 1780, fol- 
lowed by the meteorological societies of France and England about 
1850; Mauritius, 1860; Austria, 1864; Italy, 1865; Scotland, 1874; 
Germany, 1883; New England, 1884, and Japan, 1885. Of course all 
the general scientific societies throughout the world have always in- 
cluded meteorology in some special section devoted to that and cog- 
nate subjects. 
The progress made since the formation of the Mannheim Society 
has been entirely in the direction of the line of work that this society 
laid out, namely, the collecting of data from all parts of the world for 
the purpose of compiling synoptic daily weather maps for the study 
of the atmosphere as a whole. It is an instructive illustration of the 
slowness with which mankind progresses to recall that at the close of 
the work of the Mannheim Society in 1795 twelve large folio volumes 
of observations had been printed, and much had been written about 
the relations between the weather in the different parts of Europe, 
but, so far as we know, without the actual preparation of a single 
weather map, although all its data were compiled and published for 
that very purpose. It was a famous physicist, Prof. H. W. Brandes, 
of Halle, the eminent author of a work on “ The equilibrium and mo- 
tion of solid and fluid bodies,” who, in two dissertations, “ Beitrige,” 
or “ Contributions to our knowledge of the weather,” and ‘“ Repen- 
tinis,” “A physical dissertation on the sudden variations observed in 
atmospheric pressure,” Leipzig, 1820, finally drew from these ponder- 
ous volumes the data for a series of maps showing the circulation of 
winds around areas of low pressure, and thus opened the way for the 
study of the mechanical problems involved in ‘storms. It must be 
confessed, however, that his work did not greatly affect the trend of 
thought in those days; it was too early for Germany to be able to take 
advantage of his teachings. Nevertheless, as the principal editor of 
the most famous encyclopedia of physics, he filled the first few vol- 
umes of Gehler’s Physikalisches Worterbuch with the most advanced 
knowledge of his day. The sixth volume of that work, published at 
Leipzig in 1837, contains an article on meteorology written by Muncke 
after the death of Brandes, in 1834; therein Muncke relates of him- 
self and Brandes that in 1820 they had developed a plan (that had to 
be given up on account of wars between Italy and Spain) for the pub- 
lication of a general European journal of meteorology, in which 
Muncke should devote himself to the southwestern half of Europe, 
but Brandes to the northeastern half. Twenty-four principal sta- 
