WEATHER ALMANACS. 163 



Mr. Murphy, and the respect we entertain for the discrimination of the mem- 

 bers of the N society, who elected him into their body, we would pro- 

 nounce the said scientific notice to be as sheer and unmitigated nonsense as it 

 has ever been our fortune to encounter. As matters stand, however, we must 

 ascribe all to the feebleness of our own powers compared to those of Mr. Murphy. 



Having thus candidly acknowledged our inability to comprehend the author's 

 theory of meteoric action, the sublimity of which we shall not be so presump- 

 tuous as to doubt, much less to dispute, we must be content with the more 

 humble office of comparing the predictions of the Weather Almanac with the 

 actual phenomena, so far as time has converted the future into the past. 

 We have the less hesitation in adopting this test of the validity of the author's 

 principles, as it is one which he has himself courted. 



"The event in reference to these predictions being thus admitted to be in 

 some decree contingent, it may be asked If certainty cannot be attached to 

 the prediction, of what use can it be ? To this we answer, that the exceptions 

 in reference to the predictions as marked in the tables, will, it is anticipated, 

 be found to bear but a small proportion to the remainder; and in our turn we 

 shall demand, if, in nine cases out of ten, the event be found to correspond 

 with the prediction, does it follow, because one of the anticipated effects, as 

 set down in the table, does not take place, that the public is to remain ignorant 

 of the remaining nine ? For if an objection such as this were valid, it were 

 the same to say, because the quadrature of the circle cannot be found, that the 

 practical parts of mathematics should be abandoned : such exceptions, as in 

 other cases, serve but the more fully to prove the rule, as to the correctness 

 of the principles of calculation on which the predictions in the tables are 

 founded." 



Undoubtedly nothing could be more unreasonable or unphilosephical ; nay, 

 we will go further, and will admit that the author must be classed among the great 

 lights of the age, if his predictions be fulfilled even in a much smaller ratio 

 than that which he proposes. Nothing can be more true than the observation 

 with which he concludes his preface : 



" It may not, however, be amiss to add, in regard to these principles of cal- 

 culation, that, though by chance the state of the weather at any particular time 

 might possibly be predicted, that it is quite different as refers to a number of 

 facts : as to attempt to follow the sinuosities of the weather (as in the present 

 almanac) from fair to rain and from rain to fair, even for seven days consecu- 

 tirply, without the aid of correct principles, were about the same as to attempt 

 a discourse in an unknown tongue ; the thing never having been done before, 

 and for a sufficiently simple reason, because it was utterly impossible." 



Let us see whether the author has "followed the sinuosities of the weather" 

 even for three days successively. 



We have before us, on the one hand, the predictions of the Weather Alma- 

 nac for the first forty-eight days of the present year, and on the other, the Me- 

 teorological Journal, kept by order of the council of the Royal Society during 

 that time. We shall resolve these forty-eight days into three classes: Is'., 

 Those on which the weather fulfilled the prediction ; 2d, Those on which the 

 weather did not fulfil the prediction; and, 3d, Those for which no prediction 

 was made, which, as we have already shown, is the case of all those days to 

 which changeable is annexed. 



In deciding whether the prediction has been fulfilled or not, we have been 

 careful to follow those explanations of his terms which the author has very 

 properly given in his preface ; and when the character of the day, as recorded 

 in the journal of the Royal Society, has been doubtful, as compared with the 

 prediction, we have given the author the benefit of it : 



