108 
NATURE 
[JAwuARY 27, 1923 

attitude. They fall into two groups. The Catalogue 
of Meteorology in the Science Museum reviews the 
present in the light of the past, and the various pub- 
lications of the Meteorological Office of the Air Ministry 
deal with the present in anticipation of a greater future. 
Meteorology in a museum is something of a problem, 
for it is impossible to place samples of weather in a 
glass case, or at least to keep them there when the 
fog clears away, and the representation can be only 
by instruments, maps, diagrams, and models. The 
collection of instruments is intended to represent his- 
torical development and present-day adaptations, and 
the Catalogue gives a short description of the exhibits, 
following a brief historical introduction on each group 
of instruments. The number catalogued is consider- 
able and achieves a fair historical continuity. Their 
ownership is left curiously vague ; some are recorded 
as presented to the museum, but many are stated to 
be lent by well-known meteorologists, most of whom 
are now dead, so that it is scarcely likely that their 
return will be demanded. We note one misprint in 
the name of Prof. Mohn, who is consistently called 
Mohn, possibly under the influence of Féhn. A refer- 
ence should be given to ‘‘ British Rainfall,” 1908, p. 25, 
for the principle of the Hyetograph (No. 206), from 
which the originator as well as the patentee of the 
instrument could be ascertained. 
The exhibits other than instruments are scrappy and 
of little value as illustrations of the scientific develop- 
ments of meteorology, but time and some fostering care 
should remedy this. 
Turning to the side of present effort which faces the 
future, one looks on a new world. For thirty years, 
from 1882, I read every contribution to meteorology 
published accessibly in the English language and a 
good deal in other tongues. For the last ten years I 
have read practically nothing, and now find that a vast 
river of new research and discovery separates me from 
the old familiar country where Buchan ploughed his 
lonely furrow and sowed the seed of upper-air research 
on the inhospitable summit of Ben Nevis. How wide 
and deep that river is I recognise when in the preface to 
Mr. Pick’s “ Short Course in Elementary Meteorology ” 
I find the Director of the Meteorological Office saying : 
“The British Empire has produced some of the 
world’s foremost meteorologists—Halley, Beaufort, 
Abercromby, Blanford, Eliot and Shaw, to mention 
only a few.” 
No Buchan and no Aitken among these immortals ! 
An oversight of a too busy man, of course, but 
significant of the new horizons on which the great 
figures of the immediate past stand out in view of the 
men who are reaping the harvests now maturing. It 
is the natural fate of pioneers to be buried in the 
NO. 2778, VOL. 111 | 
foundations they lay for others to build on, and the 
fundamental nature of their work may remain un- 
recognised until the historians of a later generation 
tunnel amid the ruins of successive superstructures to 
find material for some science museum. Anyhow, it is 
certain that the enterprise of the students of to-day is” 
put to better purpose in pushing onwards rather than 
in looking back. The war is responsible for the © 
abruptness of the overturn which has buried much of 
the past before it is dead, and now affords to the 
young men an unencumbered field. , 
In Mr. Pick’s work and Dr. Simpson’s preface it is 
good to find strong grasp of essential principles, a dis- 
criminating disregard of irrelevant detail, and an easy 
command of concise and vigorous English. It would 
serve no purpose to regret omissions from so short a 
treatise on so great a subject. There is a wise absten- 
tion from the use of long words when short words 
serve better, and indeed the only lapse into this be- 
setting fault of youth I have noticed is the use of the 
terms “‘ katabatic””’ and “ anabatic ”’ with reference to 
the valley winds by night and day; this just serves 
to quicken a sense of thankfulness that we are spared 
“ katapelagic ” and “ anapelagic ” attacks on the land 
and sea breezes or even on the monsoons. 
Dr. Simpson’s approval can scarcely extend to Mr. 
Pick’s statement that “no great land masses are 
situated in the southern ”’ hemisphere, for is there not 
the Antarctic continent, very potent in its influence on 
the air? The effect of oceanic circulation is passed 
by, and I am sorry that Mr. Pick has missed the 
interesting analogy between the upward gradient of 
temperature in the atmosphere and the downward 
gradient of temperature in the hydrosphere. The 
treatment of water vapour in the atmosphere is de- 
lightfully fresh and clear ; the old confusion has passed 
away and the student who starts his study of meteor- 
ology with this little book is led straight into the heart 
of the subject. i 
To one who remembers the astonishment and in- 
credulity with which Dr. John Aitken’s discovery of 
nuclear condensation was greeted, it is quaint to see 
Mr. Pick’s fresh mind jumping the event with “ It 
was formerly thought that dust-particles formed the 
nuclei for condensation but ” and after all the new 
discovery is only that hygroscopic particles such as 
common salt are the efficient nuclei. Aitken classed 
salt-particles as ‘“‘ dust,’ and who can say that any 
particles in our atmosphere are not seasoned with salt ? 
To me the value of this short course is the proof it 
conveys that meteorology has attracted the rising men 
of science, not as a humdrum routine, but as a fascinat- 
ing pursuit confidently expected to yield rich results. 
Already, as the admirable section on the upper air 


