1865.] President's Address. 489 



competency or the disposition that may exist amongst our merchant seamen 

 to collect materials of the highest value for the investigations which the 

 President and Council originally recommended ; and we can entertain no 

 doubt that, whatever may prove to be the amount and value of the ma- 

 terials already collected, they will form but a small contribution towards 

 that general embodiment of the statistics of the ocean which the great in- 

 crease of our commercial activity makes of pressing importance, and which 

 may be expected to shorten materially the passages between distant ports. 



The Board of Trade were also desirous to know whether the Eoyal Society 

 has any recommendations to make with reference to what may be called 

 "Meteorology proper," viz., meteorological observations to be made on 

 land, in addition to the marine observations which were so strongly urged 

 in the letter of the President and Council of February 1855. 



The reason why the advantages to be derived from a well-directed system 

 of maritime observations was more particularly pressed on that occasion was, 

 that neither the instruments nor the modes of observation suitable for a 

 well-organized, general, and efficient system of land meteorology had been 

 then prepared. The circumstances which constituted the difficulty in this 

 respect were well stated by Lieut. Maury in a letter addressed to the 

 United States Government, dated November 6, 1852, subsequently trans- 

 mitted by the American minister to the Earl of Clarendon, and printed in the 

 papers preceding the Brussels conference, which were presented to the 

 House of Lords in February 1853. This difficultv no longer exists, having 

 been wholly obviated by the self-recording system of observation, for which 

 the necessary instruments have been devised and brought into use at the 

 Kew Observatory. 



The President and Council have had therefore no hesitation in expressing 

 the opinion that systematic meteorological observations at a few selected 

 land stations in the British Islands are desirable, in addition to the marine 

 meteorological observations, in order to complete a suitable contribution 

 from this country to the meteorological observations now in progress in 

 the principal states of Europe and America, under the authority of their 

 respective Governments. A few stations, say six, distributed at nearly 

 equal distances in a meridional direction from the south of England to the 

 north of Scotland, furnished with self-recording instruments supplied from 

 and duly verified at one of the stations regarded as a central station, and 

 exhibiting a continuous record of the temperature, pressure, electric and 

 hygrometric state of the atmosphere, and the direction and force of the 

 wind, might perhaps be sufficient to supply an authoritative knowledge of 

 those peculiarities in the meteorology of our country which would be viewed 

 as of the most importance to other countries, and would at the same time 

 form authentic points of reference for the use of our own meteorologists. 

 The scientific progress of meteorology from this time forward requires in- 

 deed such continuous records first, for the sake of the knowledge which 

 they alone can effectively supply, and next for the comparison with the 



