^4^i Natural History. [Chap. III> 



SECTION V. 



METEOROLOGY. 



The natural history of the atmosphere began to 

 be cultivated as a science in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. The ancients, for want of the necessary in- 

 .struments, Avere almost wholly unacquainted with 

 it ; but soon after the invention of the thermome- 

 ter and the barometer, the learned men of Europe 

 began to avail themselves of the manifest advan- 

 tages which these instruments gave them, in stu- 

 dying the origin, nature, and effects, of those 

 changes which take place in the atmosphere , espe- 

 cially with respect to heat and cold, motion and 

 rest, moisture and gravity. Still, however, from 

 the small number of the meteorological observa- 

 tions made by accurate philosophers -, from the 

 want of an extensive comparison of the results of 

 different observations; and especially from the 

 low state of those sciences most intimately con- 

 nected Vv'ith meteorology: little progress had been 

 made in this department of knowledge prior to 

 the commencement of the century under review. 

 yVnd though it must be acknowledged that this 

 subject is one of those which are still far from 

 ])eing satisfactorily developed, yet so much has 

 been done, during the period under consideration, 

 to throw light upon it, and so many observations 

 and discoveries have been made either directly or 

 remotely relating to it, that it has, vvdthin a few 

 years, assumed an aspect more interesting, prac- 



