TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 545 



Official meteorologists are not wanting in scientific ambitions and achievements. 

 It is true that Professor Hann, whose presence here would have been so cordially 

 welcomed, left the public service of Austria to continue his services to the world 

 of science by the compilation of his great handbook, and Snellen is leaving the 

 direction of the weather service of the Netherlands for the more exclusively 

 scientific work of directing an observatory of terrestrial physics ; but I am 

 reminded by the presence of Professor Mascart of those services to meteorological 

 optics and terrestrial magnetism that make his place as President of the Inter- 

 national Committee so natural and fitting ; and of the solid work of Angot on the 

 diurnal variation of the barometer and the reduction of barometric observations for 

 height that form conspicuous features among the many valuable memoii's of the 

 Central Bureau of Paris. 



Of the monumental work of Hildebrandsson in association with Teisserenc 

 de Bort on clouds, which culminated quite recently in a most important addition 

 to the pure kinematics of the atmosphere, I hope the authors will themselves 

 speak. Professor Willis Moore's presence recalls the advances which Bigelow 

 has made in the kinematics and mechanics of the atmosphere under the auspices 

 of Professor Moore's office, and reminds us of the debt of gratitude which the 

 English-speaking world owes to Professor Cleveland Abb6, of the same office, 

 for his treatment of the literature of atmospheric mechanics. 



If General Rykatcheff had only the magnificent climatological Atlas of the 

 Russian Empire to his credit he might well rest satisfied. Professor Mohn's 

 contributions to the mechanics of the atmosphere are examples of Norwegian 

 enterprise in the difficult problems of Meteorology, while Dr. Paulsen maintains 

 for us the right of meteorologists to share in the results of the newest discoveries 

 in physics. Davis's enterprise in the far south does much to bring the southern 

 hemisphere within our reach, while Chaves places the meteorology of the mid- 

 Atlantic at the service of the scientific world. Need I say anything of Billwillers 

 work upon the special effect of mountains upon meteorological conditions, or of 

 the immense services of those who cooperate with Hann in the production of the 

 ' Meteorologische Zeitschrift,' Professor Pernter, of Vienna, and Dr. Hellmann, of 

 Berlin ; of Palazzo's contributions to terrestrial magnetism ? The mention of Eliot's 

 Indian work, or of Russell's organisation of Australian meteorology, will be sufficient 

 to show that the dependencies and colonies are prepared to take a share in scientific 

 enterprise. And if I wished to reassure myself that even the official meteorology of 

 this country is not without its scientific ambitions and achievements I would refer 

 not only to Scott's many services to science but also to Strachey's papers on Indian 

 and British Meteorology and to the official contributions to Marine Meteorology. 



There is another name, well known in the annals of the British Association, 

 that will for ever retain an honoured place among the pioneers of meteorological 

 enterprise — that of James Glaisher, the intrepid explorer of the upper air, the 

 Nestor of official meteorologists, who has passed away since the last meeting of the 

 Association. 



I should like especially to mention Professor Hergesell's achievements in the 

 organisation of the international investigation of the upper air by balloons and 

 kites, because it is one of the departments which offers a most promising field for 

 the future, and in which we in this country have a good many arrears to make up. 

 I hope Professor Hergesell will later on give us some account of the present posi- 

 tion of that investigation, and I am glad that. Mr. Rotch, to whose enterprise the 

 development of what I may call the scientific kite industry is largely due, is present 

 to take part in the discussion. 



Yet with all these achievements it must be confessed that the progress made 

 with the problems of general or dynamical Meteorology in the last thirty years 

 has been disappointing. When we compare the position of the subject with 

 that of other branches of Physics it must be allowed that it still lacks what 

 astronomy found in Newton, sound in Newton and Ghladni, light in Young or 

 Fresnel, heat in Joule, Kelvin, Clausius, and Helmholtz, and electricity in Faraday 

 and Maxwell. Above all, it lacks its Kepler. Let me make this clear. Kepler's 

 contribution to physical astronomy was to formulate laws which no hearenlv body 

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