NovEMBER 12, 1903] 
NATURE 43 
the several services are partly by way of exchange and 
partly by way of payment for services rendered, and com- 
plication is inevitable. 
Considering the difficulties to be overcome, and the diver- 
gent interests of the different offices, the results already 
achieved, as represented in the weather maps of Europe, 
are a remarkable witness to the spirit and capacity with 
which the predecessors of the present committee have 
approached the subject. There are still some questions out- 
standing, for which a solution is obviously desirable, con- 
nected with the hours of observation and the time occupied 
in the transmission of the despatches. But questions of the 
observations and their transmission are so mixed up that 
they are as much matters for the telegraphic services as 
for the meteorological offices. Accordingly, the tendency 
of the committee, after prolonged consideration of many 
details, was towards a conference with the International 
Telegraphic Convention, and the work was devoted to 
formulating the questions which might be profitably raised 
in such a conference. 
The International Committee itself is somewhat informal 
in its proceedings. It begins formally enough by record- 
ing changes in the personnel, which may have been already 
arranged by correspondence, and receiving reports from its 
Subcommittees. On this occasion these included, besides 
the report of the Telegraphic Subcommittee already 
mentioned, an important and final report from the Com- 
mittee on cloud observations, the results of which were sub- 
sequently given to the Association by Prof. Hildebrandsson, 
and an account of the work of the Aéronautical Committee, 
of which results have been already published by the German 
Government, and which were also referred to subsequently 
in the proceedings of the section. To this was added, as a 
supplement, an account by M. Teisserenc de Bort of the 
Franco-Scandinavian aéronautical station in Jutland, estab- 
lished by him in 1902 with the cooperation of the meteor- 
ological authorities of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. 
Other work in connection with the exploration of the upper 
air was mentioned. 
The committee then went on to consider various proposals 
for the extension or improvement of observations, referred 
to the committee or made by individual members, among 
which were to be found proposals for the organisation of 
observations of atmospheric electricity referred by the 
Academy of Science of Saxony, the institution of regular 
observations of solar radiation, and various other matters 
of a more or less technical character; an account of these 
details will be given in the official report of the proceed- 
ings. An English translation of the report will be pub- 
lished as usual by the Meteorological Council. 
Two important resolutions, one appointing a subcom- 
mittee to organise a committee for dealing with simul- 
taneous solar and terrestrial changes, and the other direct- 
ing the attention of the British Association to the incon- 
veniences of the present practice of having different systems 
of units of measurement for meteorological observations, are 
referred to later on. 
At the close of the meeting of the committee, at which 
a cordial vote of thanks was passed to the Mayor and 
Corporation of Southport for the use of the committee room 
of the Town Hall for the meetings, the following future 
international assemblies were announced:—In 1904, a 
meeting of the subcommittee for terrestrial magnetism at 
Cambridge, and a meeting of the aéronautical subcom- 
mittee at St. Petersburg; in 1905 a conference of directors 
of meteorological offices and observatories at Innsbriick. 
Meetings of the Department for Astronomy and 
Meteorology. 
Meetings of the subsection of the Association devoted to 
astronomy and meteorology were held on Friday, September 
11, and the following Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. 
During part of the session of Monday and on Tuesday 
meetings of the remainder of the section were held, simul- 
taneously with those of the department, for the discussion 
of papers on mathematics and physics. 
The proceedings on September 11 commenced with the 
chairman’s address, which has already been printed in these 
columns. Arising out of a vote of thanks proposed by Prof. 
Schuster, there came what may prove to be an important 
suggestion, that the time has now arrived when meteor- 
NO. 1776, VOL. 69] 
ologists of all countries should adopt a uniform system for 
the measurements of pressure and temperature. Those 
quantities have certainly been measured long enough for 
men of science to be able to agree as to what is the most 
scientific and the most practical way of expressing them. 
The result of Prof. Schuster’s suggestion appeared first as 
a communication from the International Committee, and 
subsequently as a resolution upon the subject by the General 
Committee of the Association. The address was followed 
by a discussion of simultaneous solar and terrestrial changes, 
introduced by the president of the Association, Sir Norman 
Lockyer, in a paper which gave a short account of the 
history of the various measurements that have been made 
bearing upon the subject. In association with this paper, 
a paper by Dr. Buchan on the distribution of rainfall in 
Scotland in relation to the sun-spot period was taken, and 
a general discussion followed, in which Dr. Hellmann, of 
Berlin, referred to the work done in Germany upon the 
subject, and Father Cortie, of Stonyhurst, opposed the view 
that the connection between solar prominences and terres- 
trial phenomena is directly one of cause and effect. When 
the subject was subsequently considered by the International 
Meteorological Committee, a subcommittee was appointed 
to carry on its further development. The original members 
named are Mr, Shaw, Prof. Pernter, Sir Norman Lockyer, 
Prof. Langley, and M. Angot. Upon these now devolves the 
duty of organising the subcommittee for the furtherance of 
the object in view. After the discussion, M. Teisserenc de 
Bort read a paper in French, ‘‘ Sur les dépressions barome- 
triques,’’ in which he traced in detail the vertical structure 
of barometric depressions as determined by observations of 
the upper air. In the afternoon Messrs. Grossmann and 
Lomas exhibited some interesting pictures illustrating the 
origin and forms of hoar frost obtained in a refrigerating 
chamber. 
On Monday, September 14, the proceedings opened with 
a paper in German by Prof. Pernter, of the Austrian 
Meteorological Office, upon the use of the hair hygrometer 
in place of the psychrometer for purposes of ordinary obsery- 
ations of humidity. The contention of the paper was that 
both instruments required empirical graduation, and that 
if the same trouble were devoted to the empirical gradu- 
ation and management of the hair hygrometer as is now 
required for the psychrometer, the results would be more 
satisfactory. Prof. Pernter exhibited a specimen of the 
instrument in which no pulley was used, and one important 
cause of objection to the hair hygrometer was thus avoided. 
He also exhibited a very interesting photograph from the 
Sonnblick of a portion of a halo which had been predicted 
on theoretical grounds, but had never been observed before, 
as it is formed below the horizon line. Attention was next 
turned to astronomy by a paper of Prof. Turner’s on the 
question, ‘‘ Was the new star in Gemini shining previously 
as a very faint star? ’’? On photographs of the region taken 
by Dr. Max Wolf at Heidelberg and by Mr. Park- 
hurst at Yerkes, a faint star is shown very near the place 
of the Nova; but the evidence was on the whole against 
identity, and this conclusion was confirmed by a letter from 
Prof. Barnard, received on the morning of the meeting, 
announcing that he had observed the faint star shining 
beside the Nova. The subsection then reverted to meteor- 
ology, and listened to a very important paper by Prof. 
Hildebrandsson, of Upsala, upon the results of the inter- 
national cloud observations and their effect upon the 
general theory of the circulation of the atmosphere. 
Prof. Hildebrandsson first exhibited a reproduction of a 
drawing illustrating James Thomson’s theory of the general 
circulation, which is practically similar to the scheme of 
general circulation adopted by Ferrel. He then showed a 
series of diagrams representing the motion of the upper 
atmosphere as determined by the motions of cirrus clouds 
deduced from cloud observations in all parts of the world. 
In some cases, also, the motion of the lower clouds was 
given. The general system of circulation thus established 
was shown to differ in most important particulars from the 
calculated circulation of-Thomson and Ferrel. In the dis- 
cussion an interesting point was raised by Prof. Hergesell 
as to the extent to which the motion of air could be inferred 
from the motion of clouds, clouds only being formed in 
certain states of the atmosphere; but the question was not 
solved. 
