596 



NA TURE 



[February 27, ic 



Works Department, and the various successful 

 organisations which he initiated in that capacity. It 

 is "not too much to say, that he and his younger 

 brother John, who died about two months ago, were 

 for many years the principal figures in the adminis- 

 liation of the Indian Empire. "The Finances and 

 the Public Works of India," the title of a book which 

 they published, is not inapt as a description of the 

 position of the two brothers under Lord Mayo. 

 Between 1871, when Richard Strachey returned 

 to England, and 1879, when he finally retired from 

 India to resume his place on the Indian Council, 

 he held various appointments in connection with the 

 India Office or in India, including the chairmanship 

 of the Madras Famine Commission of 1S78. In 1889 

 he became chairman of the East Indian Railway Com- 

 pany, and added to his reputation for business 

 capacity by the successful administration of that 

 undertaking. .-Vs a financier he represented India at 

 the Monetary Conference at Brussels in 1892, and as 

 a geographer he was one of the delegates of Great 

 Britain at the Prime Meridian Conference at Washing- 

 ton in \'i&\. 



My personal recollection of Sir Richard Strachey 

 goes back to 1880, when I was engaged upon some 

 work for the Meteorological Council. He was keenly 

 interested in questions about the distribution of water 

 vapour in the atmosphere. The vertical distribution 

 was the subject of a paper in the Proceedings of the 

 Royal Society in 1862. My recollection is that he had 

 a good deal to do with disposing of an idea that I have 

 seen attributed to Herschel, that in reckoning the 

 pressure of the atmosphere, water vapour did not 

 count. I write vaguely on this point, because to re- 

 constitute the physical conceptions upon which meteor- 

 ologv was based before the 'sixties is to place oneself 

 in the age when heat was still regarded as material, 

 and the conservation of energy was an imperfectly 

 formulated idea. 



As president of the Royal Geographical Society he 

 endeavoured to promote the teaching of geographical 

 science, and he came to Cambridge to give lectures 

 on geography, a missionary effort undertaken to show 

 that geography was not really beneath the attention 

 of a university. The distribution of vapour pressure 

 in the atmosphere as determined by his own ob- 

 servations up to 18,000 feet in the Himalaya was again 

 discussed. At that time the university recognised his 

 contributions to the advancement of science by con- 

 ferring the LL.D. degree. He returned to the subject 

 of acueous vapour in the atmosphere again in the 

 determination of the heights of clouds by photographic 

 observations at Kew, a preliminary report on _ the 

 measurements was contributed to the Proceedings 

 of the Royal Society in 189 1, and there still exists a 

 great store of unworked material. 



From 1S97 onwards I was closelv associated with 

 Strachey in the management of the Meteorological 

 Office, and I speak without hesitation for his col- 

 leagues, Galton, Wharton, Buchan, Darwin, Field, 

 and Scott, in saying that association with him was 

 not the least among the privileges which attached to 

 membership of the council. His clear insight into 

 the questions at issue, his perfect lucidity in thought 

 and expression, the logical marshalling of facts in the 

 official documents which he wrote as chairman, will 

 always be memorable. He had not much patience 

 with people who were imperfectly acquainted with the 

 facts of a case under discussion, and he never cared 

 to argue with them, but difference of opinion on lines 

 of policy, even when ill expressed, never ruffled his 

 serenity in the conduct of business. From time to 

 time while he was chairman, the office was subject 

 to criticism, which was not alwavs fair, but he never 



NO. 2000, VOL. 77] 



complained. He was always content to attribute the 

 criticism to want of knowledge of the facts. He 

 would not even let us indulge in the semi-official 

 pastime of abusing the Treasury. Their responsi- 

 bility had to take account of an aspect of the 

 matter with which we were not cognisant, namely, 

 where the money was to come from, and we must be 

 content to accept a judgment that had to reckon with 

 public opinion in its executive form as well as with 

 scientific aspirations. Speaking for myself, as one 

 accustomed for many years to the details of business 

 of college meetings and university syndicates, 

 Strachey 's methods of transacting corporate business 

 v.'ere a revelation. 



As regards his later contributions to the science of 

 meteorology, some words of explanation are neces- 

 sary. He had watched, and indeed had been largely 

 instrumental in providing the facilities for, its study 

 both in India and in this country, on the new lines of 

 the comparison of results for different parts of the 

 country or of the world. He was conscious that the 

 new science required a new method, that the method 

 of the physical laboratory, which aims at elucidating 

 a physical process by experiments specially directed 

 thereto, was inapplicable to the ca.se of the free atmo- 

 sphere. Those who are critical of the vast accumu- 

 lation of meteorological data which is going on are 

 apt lo be unaware of the fact that data have to be 

 collected in advance, and that, to this day, nearly 

 every attempt to deal with a meteorological problem 

 of any importance is baffled by the want of data ; they 

 are equally unmindful of another noteworthy fact, 

 namely, that in meteorology comparison is of the 

 essence of the science. The meteorologist is abso- 

 lutely dependent upon other people's observations; his 

 own are only useful in so far as they are comparable 

 with those of others. Thus the time, trouble, and 

 monev spent upon organisation are not the ex- 

 pressions of limited scientific ambition, but a primary 

 condition for securing indispensable facilities. 

 Strachey's scientific judgment was extraordinarily 

 acute. He was quite prepared to carry on investiga- 

 tion to a speedy issue when circumstances permitted, 

 as in the investigation of the Krakatoa eruption 

 already alluded to, which led to the recognition of a 

 drift from east to west in the upper air of the equa- 

 torial regions as a primary meteorological datum. In 

 dynamical meteorology he was convinced that the 

 most promising mode of attack was not to look for 

 a direct dynamical explanation of the striking features, 

 the eccentricities of the day's weather, which are the 

 almost fortuitous result of many causes combined in 

 various phases, but to seek for the relations between 

 regular sequences and their causes underlying the 

 apparently arbitrary variations. For this reason the 

 methods of harmonic analysis specially attracted him, 

 and he was disposed to regard anything less general 

 than five-dav means as unmanageable. He never com- 

 pleted the work on harmonic analysis that he had in 

 hand. He attached particular importance to the third 

 Fourier component of diurnal variation, because the 

 length of the day in these latitudes oscillates between 

 one-third and two-thirds of the twenty-four hours. A 

 few vears ago he took up again the investigation of 

 the question, and he has left a considerable amount of 

 unfinished material. 



He was not to be driven from a position of modest 

 optimism about such matters, and always explained 

 that for a new science the progress made in the last 

 fifty years is quite as great as could fairly be 

 expected. 



But he was no friend of the unnecessary compilation 

 of data or of the unlimited extension of mean values. 

 .'Mmost the last contribution that he gave me was a 



