KEW OBSERVATORY AND METEOROLOGY 233 



and were occasionally open to serious criticism. I 

 myself ventured to attack them in some particulars 

 which it is needless now to recall. 



On his lamented death it was determined to 

 reconstruct the office, and a small Departmental 

 Committee of the Board of Trade was named to 

 consider the question. It consisted of Mr., afterwards 

 Lord, Farrer (1819-1899), who was then the 

 Secretary of the Board, the then Hydrographer, 

 Captain, afterwards Sir Frederick, Evans (1815- 1885), 

 and myself. We reported in 1 866, and I must here 

 pay a tribute to the singular grasp and thoroughness 

 of Lord Farrer, whose occasional brief notes to me, 

 in the course of the inquiry, were models of clearness 

 combined with cordiality. 



The result was the formation of a Meteorological 

 Committee in 1868, of which I was a member, for 

 giving storm warnings to seaports, for procuring 

 data for marine charts of weather, and for maintaining 

 a few standard Observatories with self-recording 

 instruments. An annual grant was made to meet its 

 expenses. This avowedly provisional arrangement 

 worked well for some years, when it was felt that the 

 scope of the Meteorological Committee ought to be 

 somewhat enlarged and its constitution reconsidered. 

 So a second Government Committee was appointed 

 by the Board of Trade and the Treasury jointly, of 

 which I was again a member, and in consequence of 

 their Report the " Meteorological Committee" was 

 changed into the " Meteorological Council," with an 

 enlarged grant. It continued in this form until 1905, 

 a little after I had retired from it owing to increasing 

 deafness. It has subsequently been modified anew, 



