366 On Storms and Meteorological Observations. 
The mean temperature of any place is so very readily ascertained 
and with so much certainty by means of a few observations upon its 
wells and springs, made within the compass of a single year, that it 
seems a very useless waste of time and attention to watch, and record 
with reference to this object, the indications of a thermometer ex- 
posed to the air, | 
‘The columns for the direction of the winds, for the aspect of the 
heavens and the amount of rain, that appear in the best meteorologi- 
y 
- cal registers are not without their value, but their usefulness would 
be very much increased if measures were instituted for effecting an 
immediate comparison of them with the observations made in ot 
and distant parts of the country. When observations with the hy- 
grometer shall have been sufficiently multiplied to warrant us in 
drawing conclusions from them, it will probably appear that the quan- 
tity of vapor is less on the western than on the eastern side of the 
Atlantic—that though the amount of precipitation is greater the air 
is considerably drier. gesne't “io sine 
_ It is however by a minute and thorough. study of individual phe- 
nomena, and tracing the progress of the changes that occur from 
time to time over a wide extent of country, that the science of me- 
teorology is to be perfected. The truth of the proposition stated by 
Leibnitz—* Neque aliud est natura quam ars quaedam magna,” 1S- 
to be borne constantly in mind. Every great storm is a succession 
~ of chemical changes, immense alike in their number, magnitude, and 
the space through which they occur, and as it is by a close attention 
to all the circumstances of single experiments, and not by a loose 
_ and indefinite approximation of a number, that chemistry has made 
such astonishing advances, so meteorology, if studied at all with suc- 
__€@88, must be pursued in the same way, the labors of many different 
persons being combined in the collection of data, where the observa- 
tions of a single individual would be inadequate to the attainment of 
the object in view. iA . 
It is not known whether the plan sketched in the following letter 
of Professor Brandes, dated Breslaw, December 1, 1816, copied 
from Gilbert’s Annals into the Bibliotheque Universelle, and transla~ 
ted from thence for the Journal of Science, has been carried into 
=. will be apparent that it might be applied with ad- 
vantage to our own country. ame: 
ca “Some investigations which I had proposed to attach to this Jetter, 
have not afforded the results I expected from them. [had collected 
* 
