322 Instructions for Making and Registering 



to dilate on the benefits which must accnie to mankind ii 

 general, from any successful attempts to subject to reasonable 

 and well-grounded prediction the irregular and seemingly 

 capricious course of the Seasons and the Winds ; or on the 

 advantages, purely scientific, which must arise from a systematic 

 developement of laws, exemplified on the great scale in the 

 periodical changes of the atmosphere, depending, as they do, 

 on the agency of all the most influential elements, and 

 embracing in their scope every branch of physical science. 

 It is more to the present purpose to observe that, from what 

 has already been done in this department of human knowledge, 

 there is every reason to hope that no very distant period may 

 put us in possession of the key to many of the most intricate 

 Meteorological Phsenomena, and enable us, though not to 

 predict with certainty the state of the weather at any given 

 time and place, yet at least to form something like a probable 

 " conjecture as to what will he the general course of the next 

 ensuing season — perhaps to prepare us beforehand for violent 

 and long-continued gales of wind — great droughts— or extraor- 

 dinarily wet seasons, &c. in the same manner that our knov/ledge 

 of the nature and laws of the tides, although confessedly 

 imperfect, and in great m.easure empirical, yet enables us to 

 announce beforehand, unusually high or low tides. No doubt 

 such predictions of the weather, although only of a probable 

 nature, would be highly valuable and useful, and would 

 materially influence the practice of men in all operations thereon 

 depending. In illustration of this, we need only refer to the 

 value set by many Farmers and others on Weather-tables 

 founded on no sound principles, and ratified, at best, if at all, 

 only by a very partial and limited experience— or, to choose a 

 better "instance, we may cite the importance which is now 

 attached by every seaman to the indications of the Barometer, 

 and the numerous cases with which nautical records abound, 

 of great mischief, or even shipwreck, avoided by timely attention 

 to its warnings. 



Meteorology, however, is one of the most complicated of all 

 the physical sciences, and that in which it is necessary to spread 

 our observations over the greatest extent of territory, and the 

 greatest variety of local and geographical position. It is only 

 by accumulating data from the most distant quarters, and by 

 comparing the affections of the atmosphere at the same instant 

 at different points, and at the same point at different moments, 

 that it is possible to arrive at distinct and useful conclusions. 

 Hence arises the necessity of procuring regular series of 

 observations made on a uniform system, and com.parabte with 

 themselves and with each other, by observers at different 

 atationa, and of mukiplymg the points of observation as much 



