686 



NATURE 



[February 26, 1920 



are less familiar. Such considerations probably 

 influenced the Meteorological Committee in con- 

 curring in the proposal for transference to the 

 Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. 



But, since the incorporation of the Meteor- 

 ological Office in a State Department is necessary, 

 as Seems to be generally agreed, the important 

 matter is how advance in all branches of the 

 subject may be assured. Besides forecasts of the 

 weather and information concerning conditions in 

 the upper air which especially affect the Air 

 Ministry, there are the needs of the Navy, the 

 mercantile marine, and the shipping community in 

 general ; the interests of farmers, foresters, and 

 fruit-growers ; the requirements of water engineers, 

 river conservancies, and many other branches of 

 the community. The War Office has special 

 demands of its own in connection with gunnery, 

 sound-ranging, etc. , and there are many questions 

 coming within the scope of the Ministry of Health 

 and other Government Departments which utilise 

 meteorological information. For all these lines 

 of work, scientific investigation must be carried 

 on continuously in order to obtain fuller know- 

 ledge of the atmospheric processes which can be 

 utilised to the advantage of the various interests 

 which have been mentioned. To this end observa- 

 tories are maintained for investigation apart from 

 their utility as reporting stations, and it is of the 

 utmost importance that such scientific research 

 should be continued and afforded full freedom ot 

 action. 



With Us transfer to the Air Ministry, the 

 Meteorological Office has gained a large addition 

 to its staff, and with its extended network of 

 reporting stations its budgetary provision in the 

 coming financial year will doubtless be greatly 

 increased. The State Service is still almost the 

 only one offering a career to a man who is 

 attracted to the subject of meteorology, and if 

 those of the best ability are to be obtained, it is 

 essential that scientific research in it should be 

 encouraged in which their powers may be 

 utilised. No announcement has so far been made 

 of the constitution of the Committee which con- 

 tinues the work of the Meteorological Committee, 

 or of its powers and responsibilities, but it is to 

 be hoped that science will be strongly represented 

 on such a Committee which can advise the Air 

 Ministry on the best policy to be pursued for the 

 advancement of meteorological science, and will 

 be empowered to direct the execution of such 

 policy. By this means the Ministry will be assured 

 that research will be carried on most efficientlv and 

 to the advantage of all branches of the subject. 

 NO. 2626, VOL. 104] 



THE BIRTH OF OCEANOGRAPHY. 

 Accoutits Rendered of Work Done and Things 

 Seen. By J. Y. Buchanan. Pp. lvii + 435 + 3 

 plates. (Cambridge : At the University Press, 

 igig.) Price 215. net. 



MR. J. Y. BUCHANAN has passed the 

 allotted span of years, but we who are 

 no longer young cannot call him old. Yet he was 

 hard at work in a generation which has all but 

 passed away, and his recollection reaches back 

 to things which are but a tradition to the most 

 of us. He is the last of that happy band who 

 set sail from Portsmouth in the Challenger under 

 Wyville Thomson just seven-and-forty years ago; 

 he was born in another world than ours, when (as 

 he tells us) the only railways on the Continent 

 ran, as kings' playthings, from Paris to Ver- 

 sailles, from Berlin to Potsdam, from Hanover 

 to Herrenshausen. Now in this volume, as in 

 one before, he has "rendered his accounts" (but 

 only partially) of the abundant work he has aone 

 and the countless things he has seen. The book 

 contains essays both great and small, from letters 

 to Nature to addresses delivered to universities 

 and learned societies, and the things of which 

 these papers treat are both big and little, for 

 Mr. Buchanan has kept a sharp look-out, conning 

 everything — from the rats in a Bordighera garden 

 (which left the oranges alone, ate the rind of 

 lemons and left the fruit, ate the fruit of man- 

 darins and left the rind) to the great panoramas 

 of earth and sea which for so many years have 

 passed before him. 



Most of the papers deal (as we should expect) 

 with matters oceanographical, such as the tem- 

 perature of the sea, its colour, its saltness, or 

 the manganese and other nodules lying in its 

 bed. The treatment is in great measure new, or 

 was so when the papers were written ; but the 

 themes are old — and are made all the more attrac- 

 tive thereby. One is reminded of Robert Boyle's 

 " Observationes de salsedine maris," or, again, • 

 of the " Histoire Physique de la Mer " — 

 based upon so little, because it was all 

 there was — of that exquisite writer and gallant 

 soldier of fortune, Louis Ferdinand, Comte de 

 Marsilli. Even one or two names like these (and 

 we do not forget Captain Maury, another great 

 captain and soldier of fortune) make us hesitate 

 a little to accept Mr. Buchanan's account of "The 

 Birthday of Oceanography." And yet perhaps 

 he is not very far wrong to persuade us that that 

 j science was born, a little to the westward of 

 ( Teneriffe, on February 15, 1873. f^*"" this was 

 j the day when the Challenger made her first 

 ( oceanic sounding ; and, immediately after, the 

 dredge came up full of new and strange things,. 



