THE NEW SCIENCE OF METEOROLOGY 



another time the reindeer and musk-ox browsed along 

 the shores of the Mediterranean. 



Possibilities, I said, not probabilities. Yet even the 

 faint glimmer of so alluring a possibility brings home to 

 one with vividness the truth of Humboldt's perspicu- 

 ous observation that meteorology can be properly com- 

 prehended only when studied in connection with the 

 companion sciences. There are no isolated phenom- 

 ena in nature. 



CYCLONES AND ANTI-CYCLONES 



Yet, after all, it is not to be denied that the chief 

 concern of the meteorologist must be with that other 

 medium, the "ocean of air, on the shoals of which we 

 live." For whatever may be accomplished by water 

 currents in the way of conveying heat, it is the wind 

 currents that effect the final distribution of that heat. 

 As Dr. Croll has urged, the waters of the Gulf Stream 

 do not warm the shores of Europe by direct contact, 

 but by warming the anti-trade- winds, which subse- 

 quently blow across the continent. And everywhere 

 the heat accumulated by water becomes effectual in 

 modifying climate, not so much by direct radiation as 

 by diffusion through the medium of the air. 



This very obvious importance of aerial currents led 

 to their practical study long before meteorology had 

 any title to the rank of science, and Dal ton's explana- 

 tion of the trade-winds had laid the foundation for a 

 science of wind dynamics before the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century. But no substantial further ad- 

 vance in this direction was effected until about 1827, 



when Hcinrich W. Dove, of Konigsberg, afterwards to 

 YOL. m.- 



