172 



NA TURE 



[December 21, 1899 



demonstrates not only what has been successfully accom- 

 plished already, but exhibits the deficiencies that demand 

 attention and offer prospects for hopeful exploration. 

 These deficiencies will be mainly of two kinds. One, due 

 to the dearth of information from sparsely inhabited dis- 

 tricts in inhospitable climates, or from regions where no 

 well-ordered government obtains. Such lacuna: are re- 

 grettable, but will gradually disappear in presence of 

 individual enterprise, employing the same means as those 

 which have been successful in more settled lands. The 

 other is more serious, and may be traced to the want of 

 greater originality in the construction and management 

 of instruments devoted to particular ends. Imitation and 

 repetition have probably been two of the main causes from 

 which meteorology has suffered. We have been too con- 

 tent with the readings of barometers and thermometers 

 in convenient positions, and have made but few attempts 

 to investigate meteorological phenomena at elevated 

 stations above the earth's surface, leading, it may be, to 

 a knowledge of vertical gradients of pressure, tempera- 

 ture, humidity, &c., and suggesting new lines of useful 

 inquiry. It may seem an ungracious remark with 

 this collection of valuable facts before us, but it would 

 appear that we have been too much engaged in recording 

 the results of particular combinations of the atmosphere 

 in particular districts, and too little concerned in the 

 antecedent processes that have produced the effects we 

 are so eager to register. 



This existing wealth of meteorological observations 

 makes us gratefully recognise the amount of labour that 

 has been bestowed upon the production of this atlas. The 

 task must have been a leviathan one, and it has been 

 grappled with manfully. The meagre bibliography of 

 four pages attached to the work, and which we cannot 

 help regarding as somewhat unworthy of its place, can 

 only very feebly indicate the sources of information that 

 . must have been consulted in the preparation of this 

 record of the climate and the weather of the world. 

 Scattered over many lands and described in various 

 languages are valuable observations and memoirs, which 

 it must have been the object of the compiler and his 

 assistants to weld into this convenient form ; and the 

 eminent authorities who have associated themselves with 

 the editor of this undertaking are a sufficient guarantee 

 that all that is serviceable, all that is trustworthy, has 

 been extracted from these hidden journals and memoirs. 

 The general result is a collection of maps which are to a 

 certain extent diagrams or the pictorial representation of 

 much tabular work, and their study affords not only 

 grounds for congratulation, but will tend to prevent un- 

 necessary duplication and suggest the necessity for more 

 strenuous and more scientific application of the methods 

 open to us. 



The atlas, consisting in all of thirty-four plates, is 

 arranged to afford information on two distinct objects of 

 meteorological inquiry, climate and weather—that is to 

 say, variations of the atmospheric conditions for short and 

 ong periods. Under the first heading, climate, we have 

 eight subdivisions. These are (i) isotherms, showing the 

 seasonal and annual distribution of temperature over the 

 world generally, and in greater detail for those countries 

 where a sufficient number of observations exists to permit 

 the lines of equal temperature to be drawn with exact- 

 NO. 1573, VOL. 61] 



ness ; (2) isobars showing the distribution of atmospheric 

 pressure, and arrows to indicate the prevailing direction 

 of winds ; (3) the relations existing between isotherms 

 and isobars ; (4, 5, 6) showing respectively the general 

 distribution of sunshine, cloud and rain over the globe ; 

 (7) maps of hyetal regions and the seasonal distribution 

 of rain ; and (8) isobars and isohyets indicating monthly 

 and annual distribution of barometric pressure and rain- 

 fall as related to each other for various countries. 



It is impossible to enter here into details of the manner 

 in which each and every of these subdivisions is treated, 

 to discuss the principles which have guided the editor 

 in constructing the maps and in overcoming the difficulties 

 which naturally beset a diagrammatic representation. It 

 goes without saying that the highest authorities have beerk 

 consulted in the preparation, and, indeed, are to a certain, 

 extent responsible for the accuracy of the maps. These 

 are executed in a very admirable manner, though some- 

 times the very neatness of execution makes it a little 

 difficult to rapidly grasp the detail printed on them. As 

 a rule, successive changes in the climatic element are 

 shown by more intense washes of the same colour ; and 

 we could have wished that this rule had been more uni- 

 formly observed, since no abrupt change, such as that sug- 

 gested by a change of colour, distinguishes the gradual 

 variation of climate with latitude. For example, there is 

 no sudden change of temperature to the north or south of 

 an arbitrarily selected isotherm, yet one passes on these 

 maps from red to yellow and from yellow to green with 

 startling suddenness, as though some new feature had 

 been introduced. 



The second main division, under the generic title 

 " weather," naturally deals with the atmospheric con- 

 ditions which have to be taken into account in making a 

 forecast whether for a shorter or longer period. Here 

 possibly there is opportunity for the exercise of greater 

 originality in the selection of the necessary material than 

 in the earlier section, which deals simply with the direct 

 results of observation. For the systematic study of 

 anomalous weather is of compai-atively recent growth, and 

 the information, based as it usually is, on shorter series 

 of observations made in districts where observatories are 

 more sparsely scattered, is not so definite nor so precise 

 as that which characterises the older observations made 

 in climates which do not experience those typical storms 

 whose careful study has been attended always with in- 

 teresting, and generally with beneficial, results. In this 

 section, if anywhere in the volume, some alteration may 

 be necessary hereafter in the detail and arrangement, oc- 

 casioned either by the deductions from more recent ob- 

 servations, or by greater generalisations due to theoretical 

 application. But it is safe to say that a very admirable 

 use has been made of the information that at present 

 exists, and in the description prefixed to the maps will be 

 found a careful summary, not only of the inquiries insti- 

 tuted by national bureaux, such as that of the United 

 States with its widespread network of stations, but also of 

 the individual researches of such physicists as Hann, 

 Eliot, Van Bebber, Doberck and others whose names 

 are household words. 



The sections into which the editor divides the subject 

 of typical and anomalous weather, or the groups under 

 which our present knowledge of this subject can be 



