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Arr. XIII. ANALYSIS OF SCIENTIFIC BOOKS. 
I. Meteorological Essays and Observations, by J. Frederick Daniell, 
F.R.S, London: Underwoods, 1823. 8vo. Pp. 479. Three 
Plates, 
“¢ Man,” as Mr. Daniell has correctly observed at the commence- 
ment of the work before us, ‘* may almost with propriety be said to 
be a meteorologist by nature; he is actually placed in such a state 
of dependance upon tke elements, that to watch their vicissitudes and 
anticipate their disturbances, becomes a necessary portion of the 
labour to which he is born. The daily tasks of the mariner, the 
shepherd, and the husbandman, are regulated by meteorological 
observations ; and, the obligation of constant attention to the changes 
of the weather, has endued the most illiterate of the species with a 
certain degree of prescience of some of its most capricious alterations. 
Nor, in the more artificial forms of society, does the subject lose 
any of its universality or interest: much of the tact of experience, 
indeed, is blunted and lost; but artificial means, derived from 
science, suppiy, perhaps inadequately, the deficiency; and the 
general influence is still felt and acknowledged, though not ac- 
curately appreciated. The generality of this interest is indeed so 
absolute, that the common form of salutation amongst many nations 
is a meteorological wish, and the first introduction between strangers 
a meteorological observation.” 
The important modifying influence exerted over the human frame 
by different conditions of the atmosphere; the comparative hilarity 
and corporeal energy communicated by one variety of weather, and 
the languor and oppression experienced in another, have long at- 
tracted the regards of philosophers to the investigation of the origin 
of many of those diseases, especially of an epidemic nature, which 
affect mankind. Hitherto, however, but little positive information 
has been derived from the inquiry; the precise physical condition— 
the exact constitutio aéris, exerting a baneful influence over health, 
being still enveloped in uncertainty. 
The various eudiometrical experiments which haye been instituted 
in sickly climates and seasons having failed to elucidate the subject, 
the same constituent gaseous principles, and the same proportion 
of those constituents having been found as in a healthy atmosphere, 
it has been supposed by the author before us, that an accurate 
method of estimating the varying quantity of aqueous vapour in the 
elastic medium which surrounds us—the only fluctuating ingredient 
of its composition, might lead to some useful hints on this interesting 
subject, and suggest in some important diseases, in those of the lungs 
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