78 M. Kupffer's Meteorological Observations made at 



" Meteorology, sharing with astronomy the advantage of a 

 high antiquity, has not, in like manner, shared its fate. As- 

 tromony presents to us a concatenation of periodical pheno- 

 mena, and every century added to the observations, adds at 

 the same time to the accuracy of the results ; hut meteorology, 

 which embraces so many disjoined phenomena, in which no 

 secular period has yet been observed, gains nothing by as- 

 cending to the times of its origin ; on the contx'ai'v, it only en- 

 counters, in the history of its infancy, superstitions, and a pro- 

 found ignorance of the laws of nature. In early times, the 

 imagination of man, separating all physical explanation from 

 observed phenomena, and misunderstanding entirely the na- 

 tural relation of causes and effects, supposed a free will, a 

 Deity, wherever immutable laws were afterwards discovered. 

 At a subsequent epoch, the study of meteorological phenomena, 

 abandoned to sailors and shepherds, only produced gloomy 

 superstitions, conformable to the spirit of the age which made 

 the genius of evil preside over all Avorldly things. And at pre- 

 sent, how many false and unfounded ideas are those which 

 are believed even in the most enlightened class of society ! 

 how absurdly people often talk about good and bad weather, 

 about the influence of the moon in meteorological phenomena, 

 and about the predictions of the barometer ! 



" This long infancy of meteorology, — this slow develop- 

 ment of a science which occupies so many, and the study of 

 which supposes so few means, is owing to many causes. The 

 origin of meteorology goes back, as we have seen, to a remote 

 epoch, when men did not yet possess the means necessaiy to 

 resolve, by exact observations, such complicated and difficult 

 questions ; they pronounced the name of meteorology as a 

 distinct science, without being able to constitute it as such. 

 In ancient times, they did not know the art of making expe- 

 riments, that is, of producing on a small scale, and of ap- 

 jiroximating, so to speak, by the observer, the great pheno- 

 mena of nature, — of isolating them, — of stripping them of all 

 that is accidental, and which complicates the question, with- 

 out belonging essentially to it. It is only in the eighteenth 

 century that men have begun to discover, by multiplied and 

 skilfully combined ex])eriments, certain laws, — certain agents. 



