THE MECHANICS OF THE EARTH'S ATMOSPHERE 

 A THIRD COLLECTION OF TRANSLATIONS 



BY CLEVELAND ABBE 



INTRODUCTION 



In order to introduce English-speaking students of meteorology 

 to the rapidly increasing literature bearing on the fundamental 

 mechanical problems of that science, I have been encouraged to 

 publish numerous translations either in the "Monthly Weather 

 Review" of the U. S. Weather Bureau or in the technical journals. 

 Others are collected in the "Short Memoirs on Meteorological Sub- 

 jects," Smithsonian Report for 1877, pp. 376-478, and in "The 

 Mechanics of the Earth's Atmosphere," Smithsonian Miscella- 

 neous Collections, 1891. As our knowledge of the subject pro- 

 gresses and we perceive new difficulties arising, so also we learn 

 to conquer those older ones that were the ultima thule of the 

 past generation. Step by step man is penetrating the complex 

 maze of forces that push our atmosphere hither and thither. Its 

 internal mechanism is so complex that superficial students content 

 themselves with empirical rules or search for cosmical relations 

 of minor importance: the very ablest investigators have as yet 

 solved only the simpler problems relating to idealized conditions 

 that rarely occur in nature. 



In this third collection of translations bearing on the mechan- 

 ics of the earth's atmosphere I have ventured to begin with that 

 elementary but classic memoir by Hadley which gave occasion to 

 the Berlin Academy in 1746 to offer a prize for a mathematical 

 discussion of the motions of the atmosphere. The prize was 

 awarded to d'Alembert; subsequently Musschenbroek, deLuc, Euler, 

 Bernoulli, Lambert, von Lindenau (in 1806) and Brandes (in 1822) 

 successively contributed to the elucidation of this subject. But 

 it was Poisson who, in 1837, first deduced correctly the influence 

 of the earth's rotation on moving solids, and Tracy who in 1843, 

 applied similar views to the rotation of storms. Poisson's works 

 and ideas were generally known to the scholars of France as shown 

 by the prolonged discussion, 1850-1860, of the Foucault pendulum 



