June 29, 19 16] 



NATURE 



365 



an effort by an imitative instinct which is strong- 

 in all birds that sing vigorously; and they succeed 

 in imitating with something like accuracy church 

 bells or other musical sounds made by human 

 beings on the diatonic scale. Sometimes this 

 accuracy in the production of intervals may be 

 the result of accident rather than imitation. 



The difficulty that birds have in attaining this 

 accuracy is well shown in a letter by Canon Grevile 

 Livett (June i6), who tells how a blackbird which 

 had attained it one year had to practise hard for 

 a week the following spring before he recovered 

 it. The only bird known to me whose natural 

 " song " is on the diatonic scale is the cuckoo ; and 

 I am inclined to think that his third is not often 

 j)erfect major or minor, but fluctuates between the 

 two. W. Warde Fowler. 



DR. R. H. SCOTT, F.R.S. 



DR. ROBERT HENRY SCOTT died on 

 Sunday, June i8, at the advanced age 

 of eighty-three. He was well known as the 

 chief of the staff of the Meteorological Office 

 from the commencement of the operations of 

 the Meteorological Committee of the Royal 

 Society in 1867 until his retirement on a pension 

 in 1900, for the first nine years as Director of the 

 Office, and for the remainder of the term as 

 secretary of the Meteorological Council, which took 

 over the direction of the Office in 1876. He was 

 also secretary of the International Meteorological 

 Committee from its commencement in 1874 

 until his retirement from office, and his work for 

 that body was held in high esteem by his col- 

 leagues in all quarters of the globe. He was a 

 fellow of the Royal Society from 1870. He re- 

 ceived the honorarv degree of D.Sc. at Dublin in 

 1898. 



Dr. Scott was born in Dublin in 1833, a member 

 of a well-known family. His father was a Q-C, 

 and his mother a daughter of the Hon, Charles 

 Brodrick, Archbishop of Cashel ; one of his 

 brothers was Headmaster of Westminster, and 

 another was Vicar of Bray and Archdeacon of 

 Dublin. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity 

 College, Dublin, where he was . classical scholar 

 in 1853, and graduated as Senior Moderator in 

 Experimental Physics in 1855. He studied 

 also at Berlin and Munich, 1856 to 1858, 

 chiefly chemistry, physics, and mineralogy. He 

 was appointed Lecturer In Mineralogy to the 

 Royal Dublin Society in 1862, and published a 

 Manual of Volumetric Analysis in that year. He 

 also published in the same year a translation of 

 the second edition of "The Law of Storms, by 

 H. W. Dove, F.R.S.," whose lectures he had 

 attended at Berlin. The book is dedicated by the 

 author to FitzRoy, who had translated the first 

 edition. It was on that account that Scott was 

 selected by the Meteorological Committee of the 

 Royal Society, of which Sir Edward Sabine was 

 chairman, to take charge of the Meteorological 

 Office. His relations with Sabine were intimate, 

 and he became his executor. 



In 1861 FitzRoy, whose original duty was ex- 

 NO. 2435, VOL. 97] 



clusively with the meteorology of the sea, had 

 begun the issue of forecasts and storm-warnings, 

 based upon the information collected daily by tele- 

 graph and charted on maps. \ map of the 

 weather is often a fascinating document, and the 

 impulse towards sharing the information with the 

 general public, all of whom are interested in the 

 weather, is very difficult to resist; but some pro- 

 minent members of the Royal Society thought 

 that FitzRoy 's action in publishing forecasts and 

 storm-warnings was premature. They were in- 

 terested in the continuous records of weather 

 which they had obtained at Kew Observatory, and 

 thought the proper plan was to have seven other 

 observatories of the same kind and study the 

 maps in relation to the records. The ix>pular 

 interest which FitzRoy 's action had aroused 

 secured for them, with the co-operation of the 

 Admiralty and the Board of Trade, a Government 

 grant of 10,000/. a year for the Office, and Scott 

 was entrusted with the direction of the new enter- 

 prise, while a marine superintendent, Captain 

 Henry Toynbee, was appointed to carry on the 

 original duty of collecting and discussing marine 

 observations. 



The issue of forecasts and storm-warnings was 

 suppressed; but at the request of the Board of 

 Trade the issue of storm-warnings was at once 

 revived. The telegraphic work was developed on 

 careful lines, and the first result of Scott's work 

 appeared in 1876 in a little book entitled 

 "Weather Charts and Storm-Warnings." In 

 1879 the work had progressed so far that it was 

 deemed appropriate by the Meteorological Council, 

 a very powerful body of scientific experts then in 

 control of the Office, to recommence the issue of 

 forecasts. The issue was commenced on April i 

 of that year, and has continued ever since. This 

 was followed in 1883 by Scott's "Elementary 

 Meteorology," in the "International Scientific 

 Series," which took a foremost place as a text- 

 book of meteorology. 



From that time onward Scott devoted his at- 

 tention mainly to the administration of the Office 

 and to the work of the Meteorological Society, 

 of which he became the foreign secretary', a post 

 which he retained up to the time of his death. 

 He was president in 1884 and 1885. He still con- 

 tinued to take an active interest in mineralogy and 

 was at one time president of the Mineralogical 

 Society. His other contributions to meteorological 

 literature, whether official or unofficial, were 

 mostly of a technical character. 



After the great generalisation of cyclones and 

 anti-cyclones, and their movement, which 

 emerged almost immediately from the study 

 of maps and records, meteorology* was found 

 to resist all ordinary endeavours to make 

 it disclose its secrets, and it was not until 

 the development of the study of the upper air 

 from 1896 onwards that a fresh impetus was 

 g^iven to it and we learned that many of the funda- 

 mental ideas of atmospheric circulation required 

 re\''ision. But by that time Scott's active interest 

 in the development of the subject had waned. 



He was most methodical and punctilious in the 



