276 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, 



upon the appointment of Dietfirici to be director of the Statis- 

 tical Department of Prussia. 4 May you only be granted the 

 means for displaying your activity ! ' he remarks to the new 

 director on August 13, 1844. 'What a pity there is no orga- 

 nised arrangement in your department for the collection of a 

 series of observations in Pomerania, and other provinces, as to 

 the mean temperature of each month, which would prove of 

 considerable value, both to agriculture and navigation. Twenty 

 barometers disposed among suitable observers would show re- 

 markable variations in their readings. Observations are, in- 

 deed, made in various localities, but the results are buried in 

 day-books. There is a constant complaint throughout the 

 country of the diminution of the water supply and the increased 

 shallowness of the rivers, and yet in no part of Prussia is there 

 kept a register of the rainfall. Could you but secure the ser- 

 vices of Dr. Mahlmann, who has published some admirable 

 tables on the temperature, he would be well fitted for the office, 

 and would not expect a large salary.' l By an order in council 

 of January 9, 1846, permission was granted for the establish- 

 ment of an office of meteorology, and Mahlmann, for whom 

 Humboldt had already sought assistance from the Academy, 

 was appointed director, an office he held but for two years, till 

 his death in 1848. Humboldt lived to witness the prosperity 

 of the scheme, under the management of a director of whom he 

 vaunted that 6 with great ingenuity and perseverance he had 

 laid down new and sound theories as to the distribution of 

 heat upon the surface of the globe ; ' 2 he had also the satisfac- 

 tion of seeing at least the whole of northern Germany brought 

 by Prussian influence under a system of meteorological obser- 

 vation, of seeing, for the first time, tabulated a registry of 

 the weather for ten years throughout Germany, in which the 

 average rain-fall was represented with great accuracy, especially 

 in North Germany, together with a register of the decrease in 

 temperature dependent on the greater elevation of the plains. 

 He followed with the liveliest interest the publications of the 

 results, and sought to excite the attention of the king to the 



1 Rich. Bockh's 'Die gesclrichtliche Entwickelungderamtlichen Statistik 

 des preussischen Staats,' p. 63. 

 * A. von Humboldt's ' Kleinere Schriften/ Preface, p. vi. 



