160 Mb. J. Beyce on the Recent Progress of lite 



established by a careful comparison with a standard instrument, and 

 with one another. The data, or facts on which generalizations are to 

 be built, have thus a manifest connection with the employment of 

 accurate and correspondent instruments, and a wide spread association 

 of observers. 



(3.) It would be a mere waste of time to point out the vast impor- 

 tance of that simultaneity' in the observations to which we have been 

 referring, or to dwell on the selection of proper stations and accurate 

 correspondent instruments. The great advance in meteorology, and the 

 still greater anticipated progress which, there can be no doubt, the 

 science will soon make, is entirely due to this and to the admirable con- 

 trivances by which photography has been applied to the automatic regis- 

 tration of phenomena during every moment of every day throughout 

 the j^ear. One of the greatest works which the British Association 

 has accomplished is the establishment of a simultaneous system with 

 improved instruments. This body was not the first, however, to organize 

 such a system, so far at least as simultaneity and proper stations are 

 concerned. The Meteorological Society of England, estabUshed in 

 1823, took the first step toward combined observations. In 1839 they 

 published their first volume of papers. It is only within a few years, how- 

 ever, that they have encouraged, in every way, the use of approved instru- 

 ments, and undertaken to supply such, with instructions to intending 

 observers. They have now a great many stations over England, from 

 which Reports are forwarded to Mr. James Glaisher of the Royal 

 Observatory, whose important labours ai"e well known. The complete 

 accomplishment of the great work is due to the British Association, 

 acting on the government through a standing committee of its leading 

 men, and powerfully aided by a committee of the Royal Society. Im- 

 portant grants were obtained, and the heai-ty co-operation of enlightened 

 official men at home, and in om* widely extended colonial possessions. 

 Observatories already in existence were improved and suppUed with new 

 means of observing, while a few additional observatories were set up 

 for the special purposes pointed out by the Association. On their 

 repeated earnest representation, the Antarctic Expedition imder Captain, 

 now Sir James Clark Ross, and Captain Crozier, was sent out in 

 1840-42 at the public expense ; — the results of which may be set 

 side by side with those of the most important and interesting voyages 

 before undertaken by our nation, while the conduct of it has reflected 

 the highest honour on the skill, courage, and indomitable energy and 

 daring of the two commanders and their associates. Still more 

 recently (in 1851) the Government was induced to grant the use of a 

 disused inconvenient observatory in the old Richmond Deer Park, now 



