l82 



NATURE 



[December 8, 1910 



Captain H. Toynbee as marine superintendent. Jhe 

 office occupied the quarters at i and 2 Parliament Street, 

 belonging to the Board of Trade, which accommodated 

 FitzRoy's department; but to its chagrin it was dis- 

 possessed in 1869, and the ejected committee hired 

 accommodation for itself in the form of a residential flat 

 over a shop at 116 Victoria Street. 



In 1875 another Government committee of inquiry was 

 constituted, with the result that in 1877 the direction of 

 the office became vested in a council appointed by the 

 Royal Society. This constitution lasted until 1905, when, 

 as the result of a third committee of inquiry, the present 

 system was adopted, under which the office is managed by 

 a director with an advisory committee appointed by the 

 Treasury. Throughout the period of the council the office 

 occupied the premises at 116 Victoria Street, which during 

 its tenure was renumbered 63. 



It cannot be said that the council regarded the suite of 

 offices which they occupied as ideal accommodation for 

 the Office ; but it was generally hampered for want of 

 funds, and, as a matter of practical politics, the idea of 

 new accommodation may be attributed to Sir H. Maxwell's 

 committee of 1903, which pronounced the accommodation 

 at Victoria Street to be unsuitable. The advantage of 

 housing the office under the same roof as a post office 

 had long been recognised, and the wish of the Post Office 

 to have a permanent structure at South Kensington on 

 land which formed part of the estate of the Commission 

 for the Exhibition of 185 1 led, at the suggestion of a 

 member of the Meteorological Committee, to an arrange- 

 ment by the Treasury for the committee to rent from 

 H.M. Office of Works more spacious accommodation than 

 they had at Victoria Street at practically the same rent. 

 The arrangement was concluded in May, 1907, and the 

 transfer of the work to the new premises was completed on 

 November 15, 1910. The party on December i was intended 

 to give those interested in the work of the office an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing the new premises newly equipped. 



This long introduction is necessary, because the office 

 has now fifty-six years of history behind it, passed in a 

 habitation chosen with a view to the collection and dis- 

 cussion of observations from sea and land. During 

 that time it has been responsible for supplying meteor- 

 ological instruments to the Navy, the mercantile marine, 

 its own stations, and recently to colonial Governments, 

 and it has become the controlling centre of more than 500 

 stations of various kinds in these islands and in various 

 colonies, while it has instruments on more than 200 ships 

 afloat, and is in direct communication with nearly all 

 liners crossing the Atlantic. It has made a vast collection 

 of observations from ships in the form of log books which 

 fill 500 feet of shelving. It deals with about 50,000 tele- 

 grams a year in its telegraphic branch. The independent 

 existence of the British Rainfall Organisation, founded as 

 a private enterprise by Mr. G. J. Symons, a member of 

 FitzRoy's staff, exonerates it from dealing fully with the 

 statistics of rainfall, but for more than forty years it has 

 aided the meteorological societies of London and Edin- 

 burgh in the collection of climatological data for the 

 British Isles, and has gradually become itself a centre for 

 the compilation of returns from volunteer observers all 

 over the country and from some of the colonies. To this 

 collection is added the published meteorological data of all 

 the countries of the world, forming a library almost unique 

 of its kind. It has issued publications to the number of 

 about 250 volumes, which, being in the form of Blue- 

 books or of unwieldy atlases or charts, are little read. So 

 far as the general public is concerned, it appeals to them 

 only through the forecasts which the newspapers are kind 

 enough to issue for it, through the storm signals which 

 are occasionally visible on the coasts, and through certain 

 fishery barometers supplied to coast stations, which are, 

 however, mostly marked with the initials B.T., because 

 the official in charge was unwilling to recognise as de jure 

 the dissociation de facto of the office from the Board of 

 Trade. 



Until quite recently, partly on account of the apathetic 

 attitude of the universities, partly because meteorology 

 deals with British units and other sciences use metric 

 units, the education of the people in the new science had 

 not ever been begun. The meteorology of Daniell and 



NO. 2145, VOL. 85] 



Herschel had been, in fact, allowed to fall out of the 

 educational curriculum, and its place was taken by sciences 

 with which the teachers were themselves acquainted. 



In moving their home from N'ictoria Street to South 

 Kensington the Meteorological Committee has set itself 

 to change all this. They have sought to secure, with 

 what success the public may now judge, space in which 

 their collection of books and records can be reasonably 

 well housed, and which at the same time affords an oppor- 

 tunity to display, for the information of the public, a 

 series of exhibits which show what the work of the 

 Meteorological Office has been in the last fifty years, what 

 its work is now, how it does it, and what its purpose is 

 in doing it. Those who have visited the office will agree 

 that the idea of combining a library with a museum has 

 elicited very generous sympathy from the Office of Works, ' 

 and that the architect of the new building, Sir. H. Tanner,' 

 has dealt with the problem, which is not without difficulty, 

 in a manner for which admiration is not too strong a 

 term to use. The space is perhaps a little over full, as 

 the library has even now to accommodate part of the 

 working staff of the office in addition to its other require- 

 ments ; but when it is remembered that rent is still a 

 consideration to be reckoned with by the committee, there' 

 is, after all, little to complain of. 



The office premises are mainly on the first and second 

 floors of the new building at the corner of Exhibition Road-. 

 and Imperial Institute Road. These two floors provide,* 

 besides the library and its ante-room, a room for the 

 director and rooms for the four superintendents and for 

 the director's secretary, a large room for the clerical stafT- 

 and another for the forecast staff, three rooms for the 

 marine staff, and two for the instruments staff. To judge • 

 by external appearances, the whole building might be re-- 

 garded as a post office, but it is not so. The ground floor . 

 and the greater part of the basement is assigned to the 

 post office, but in the basement the Meteorological Office • 

 has space which it is hoped may provide for a printing 

 office as well as a workshop. A small physical laboratory 

 is provided on the third floor, the remainder of which ia 

 temporarily occupied by the staff of the Science Museum^ 

 Access is given thereby to a large flat roof, which provides 

 invaluable opportunity for the exposure of instruments fo^ 

 the purposes of trial and investigation. 



The manner in which the committee have utilised thi 

 space at their dis{x>sal and have kept in view the educa4 

 tional purposes which have been indicated will be evidenf 

 from the list of exhibits prepared for the party 

 December i. 



In a case outside the doorway is exhibited the mos^ 

 recent information about the current weather, based on 

 the telegrams received. In the outer lobby, opposite th< 

 door of the post office, is a case containing a barographJ 

 the recording apparatus of a Callendar thermograph, anc 

 of a Dines pressgre-tube anemograph, exhibiting the coni 

 tinuous record of pressure, temperature, and wind velocityj 

 On the walls of the inner lobby and the staircase leadins 

 to the first floor are a series of frames showing the cours^ 

 «f the seasons in the British Isles as determined by th^ 

 weekly averages since 1878. The relation thereto of th« 

 weekly values of the current season for four divisions 

 the country is shown upon transparent paper, which covers 

 the diagrams of average variation. " These diagrams lead 

 up to one which shows how the meteorological elements 

 at the several stations in the same district may vary under 

 similar types of weather. Four frames show the monthly 

 meteorological charts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, 

 and further on is a diagram showing the variation of 

 temperature in the upper air on various occasions in 190? 

 up to 15 miles or more, in juxtaposition with a series of 

 photographs of clouds presented to the office by Dr. 

 W. J. S. Lockyer. 



The catalogue of exhibits makes reference to a series 

 of three cases on the first-floor hall intended to illustrate 

 the work of the office under FitzRoy at the Board of 

 Trade, under Sabine and Scott, of the Meteorological Com- 

 mittee of the Royal Society, and under the Meteorological 

 Council, with Smith and Strachey, successively, as chair- 

 man, but for reasons not given in the programme the 

 cases are not yet there ; some of the exhibits are to be 

 found compressed into a single case in the upper corridor. 



