December 8, 19 lo] 



NATURE 



183 



The hall accommodates, however, a radiation recorder by 

 Callendar and a hyetograph or rain recorder of Negretti 

 and Zambra's most recent pattern. 



From the hall we pass to an ante-room provided with a 

 counter for the supply of information of various kinds, 

 and leading to the library and museum on the one side 

 and to the headquarters of the clerical and inquiry staff 

 on the other. This room, with the library and the stair- 

 case, are finished throughout with ornamental woodwork 

 in Austrian oak. Round the ante-room are glass cases 

 for the display of barograms from ships and land stations, 

 anemograms and other records of importance to aero- 

 nauts, and also cases devoted for the present to diagrams 

 prepared in the office to show results deduced from data 

 for the whole globe or for British observatories or stations, 

 including the relationships of meteorology and agriculture. 

 A diagram, newly prepared, showing the distribution of 

 rainfall throughout the day for the several months of the 

 year at Kew and Valencia, is specially noticeable. In the 

 same room is the Kelvin harmonic analyser constructed for 

 the council to be used for the analysis of barograms and 

 thermograms. A relief map of the British Isles on the 

 scale of one-millionth, intended for the central space, 

 being unfinished, was represented by a cast of the English 

 - ction. 



On either side of the entrance to the library and museum 

 are square kiosks for envelopes, the faces of which are 

 framed in glass and used for displaying the weekly sets 

 of records from observatories, the records of sunshine at 

 ninety-two stations for a single day of last summer, and 

 the winter sunshine records of 1909-10 in London, Cam- 

 bridge, and Eastbourne. Within the library, in four cases, 

 are displayed a series of exhibits in connection with marine 

 meteorology, the daily service of forecasts and storm- 

 warnings, climatological statistics, and the investigation 

 of the upper air. Another and larger case is devoted to 

 the observatories at Kew and Eskdalemuir. Four small 

 cases show a new method of representing data for the 

 whole world on what is called a developable globe. The 

 current daily weather charts of all countries and the latest 

 climatological reports from the British Dominions are 

 collected together in special cabinets. Two glass cases 

 face one as one enters the museum : one contains speci- 

 mens of the normal instruments adopted by the office, the 

 other such examples as the office possesses of the corre- 

 sponding instruments of other countries. 



The library is divided into six compartments by book- 

 cases extending from the side walls. In four of the com- 

 partments the books of published data are grouped accord- 

 ing to countries, the remainder being occupied by 

 periodicals, text-books, &c. The recesses of three of the 

 bays are used by the working staff of the statistical and 



iirary division of the office; two are furnished with tables 



r students, and on the book-cabinets near by the latest 

 additions to the library are displayed. A few educational 

 exhibits, lantern-slides, photographs, &c., including some 

 valuable stereophotographs of clouds from a long base, by 

 Mr. J. Tennant, were set on Thursday on one of the 

 tables. 



The library is not large enough to contain all the books 

 and documents belonging to the office. Accordingly, the 

 -nanuscript records of observations at stations of various 



nds find a place in the room of the superintendent of 



atistics. The original working charts of the Daily 

 Weather Service are housed with the files of daily synchro- 

 nous charts of all kinds in the forecast room, a spacious 

 room on the second floor in direct connection by means of 

 pneumatic tube with ■ the instrument room of the post 

 office. The series of meteorological logs from ships, now 

 exceeding 13,000 in number, is housed in the working 

 rooms of the marine staff ; the books of data extracted 

 from them are in the marine superintendent's room or in 

 the passage near by. The stock of instruments is housed 

 in the rooms of the instruments staff, while separate store 

 roonis are set apart for publications and for observatory 

 '■"(-brds. These latter are already too numerous for the 



' ommodation provided. The bound volumes of anemo- 

 grams are therefore stored on shelves elsewhere, and for 

 the time being the sunshine cards are in the basement, 

 where it is proposed to construct with them a 13-inch wall 

 50 feet in length and 10 feet high. 



One of the main difficulties connected with the removal 



NO. 2145, VOL. 85] 



has been the housing of the enormous collection of records 

 and documents, the accumulation of upwards of fifty-six 

 years. The problem of the ultimate fate of these accumu- 

 lations is one which has now to be faced. 



The new arrangement of the office, which is open to 

 the public, has chiefly in view the educational advantages 

 which a library and museum can afford ; but it has another 

 object. One often hears a distinction drawn between 

 routine and research, sometimes to the disparagement of 

 the work of an office. Routine work in meteorotogy is 

 really and truly cooperative research ; if not it ought to be 

 discontinued, for it has ceased to have any object. Re- 

 search in the more restricted sense means personal research 

 upon a subject selected by the individual taste. In co- 

 operative research one cannot choose one's subject ; it has 

 been chosen for us by international agreement, by confer- 

 ences and congresses, by committees perhaps, or by other 

 circumstances over which we have no immediate control. 

 What is still left to our free choice is whether the co- 

 operative research shall be manifestly our research or other 

 people's research. Routine becomes sterile when it is a 

 listless contribution to other people's research. To keep 

 cooperative research alive we need to keep very close up 

 to the working face of the bore into the unknown. It 

 may take a generation or more to carry the whole work 

 through, and premature publication may be worse than 

 routine. To put the record of our progress in a shape in 

 which it can be seen by those who appreciate it, as well 

 as those who do not, gives us a place in the ranks of 

 conscious workers for a definite, even if a distant, object. 



W. N. Sh.aw. 



THE CLAIMS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH. 

 ''PHE anniversary dinner of the Royal Society was held as 

 we went to press last week. Lord Robson proposed 

 the toast of " The Royal Society," and it was replied to by 

 Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., president of the society. 

 In the course of his remarks. Lord Robson pointed out 

 that in nearly every direction the labour and research of 

 science, however remote they may sometimes seem from 

 the affairs of the workshop or the office, are opening up 

 new and almost illimitable sources of wealth and new 

 avenues of profitable employment. It is the man of science 

 who is to decide the fate of the tropics ; not the soldier, 

 or the statesman with his programmes and perorations, 

 but the quiet entomologist. He is the man of science who 

 of all others strikes popular imagination the least, and 

 gets less of popular prestige ; but he has begun a fascin- 

 ating campaign for the sanitary conquest of those 

 enormous tracts of the earth, and before long he will have 

 added their intensely fertile soil, almost as a free gift, to 

 the productive resources of the human race. The report in 

 the Times states that Lord Robson continued as follows : — 

 " Not long ago it was my duty to consider legislation 

 in reference to the most complicated problems of over- 

 crowding in cities. That is essentially a problem for 

 statesmen, but not for statesmen alone. Perhaps the most 

 hopeful attack on overcrowding is being unconsciously 

 made by those men of science who have lately done so 

 much to improve the transmission of electric power. They 

 are on the way to make it possible and profitable for 

 factories to establish themselves away from cities and coal- 

 pits, and yet have the exact amount of power they want 

 each day for their machinery sent down to them every 

 morning by wire at a trivial cost. Some day manu- 

 facturers will begin to go back to the land, and we shall 

 regard engine-building or soap-boiling as rural occupations. 

 We look to you, the men of science, and almost to you 

 alone, to ensure, not only that our centres of population 

 shall not be congested, but also that our cities, now smoke- 

 laden and devitalised, shall not be polluted. I have 

 spoken of a sanitary conquest of the tropics. Give us also 

 a sanitary conquest of the air of England. What a pro- 

 gramme of social reform the Royal Society has got ! Yet 

 I have not heard that you are making any claims on the 

 Development Fund. In all seriousness and earnestness, I 

 contend that you ought to be the most favoured, as you 

 would certainly be the most meritorious, of all claimants 

 on that reservoir of national generosity. The various 

 sections and interests who are on the wav to absorb it all 



