THE MECHANICS OF THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE: 



A COLLECTION OF TRANSLATIONS. 



By Cleveland Abbe. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The complexity of the phenomena of the atmosphere has rendered it 

 necessary to delay their mathematical treatment until our knowledge 

 of hydro-dynamics and thermodynamics could attain the perfection 

 which it began to acquire about the middle of this present century 

 at the hands of Helmholtz, Clausius, Sir William Thomson, and their 

 disciples During the past few years some of the fundamental prob- 

 lems of meteorology have been treated analytically and graphically 

 with great success. The present collection of translations presents 

 some of the best memoirs that have lately been published on the re- 

 spective subjects by European investigators ; a few earlier memoirs of 

 great excellence are included in the collection because of the references 

 subsequently made to them. Other mathematical memoirs by Guldberg 

 and Mohu, Marchi and Diro Kitao have been omitted because their 

 length would have made this collection too large for the present mode 

 of publication. 



There is a crying need for more profound researches into the me- 

 chanics of the atmosphere, and believing as I do that meteorology can 

 only be advanced beyond its present stage by the devotion to it of the 

 highest talent in mathematical and experimental physics, I earnestly 

 commend these memoirs to such students in our universities as are 

 seeking new fields of applied science. 



I have taken a very few liberties in translating the language and 

 notation -of the distinguished authors whose works are here collected. 

 I have frequently used the word liquid instead of " Wasser," " Tropf bar- 

 Elussigkeit,'" -'Iukoinpressible Flussigkeit," and the word gas or vapor 

 as equivalent to compressible or elastic fluid, and have used the word 

 fluid when the more general term including liquids, vapors, and gases 

 is needed. As the ideal or " perfect " liquid is absolutely incompressi- 

 ble and devoid of all resistance to mere change of shape, having neither 

 elasticity nor viscosity, namely, internal friction, it seems more proper 



