TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 457 
powerless to move the English Government to grant an extra five hundred pounds 
annually for this work. The English Government, on the other hand, some time 
ago suggested that the Indian Meteorological Department should assist. The 
Government of India, recognising the importance of the work, has provided the 
funds and sanctioned the arrangements necessary in order that its Meteorological 
Department may march with the most progressive nations in this investigation. 
India has no body of voluntary observers or independent scientific workers 
and investigators. Whatever is required to be done to extend practical and 
theoretical meteorology can only be effected by the Government Department to 
which that work is assigned, with the sanction and at the cost of the Government 
—which naturally considers chiefly its practical wants in relation to its limited 
resources. It is, from one point of view, a painful if not quite an unexpected 
experience to me, on my retirement, to find that the Government of India is, 
in its attitude towards meteorological inquiry, more advanced, more liberal 
and far-sighted than the English Government, and that England has not yet 
taken up seriously the work of scientific meteorological investigation. There are 
undoubtedly too many observations and too little serious discussion of observations. 
The time has arrived when investigation should go hand in hand with accurate 
observation, and should direct and suggest the work of observation, and also that 
the sciences directly related to meteorology should be considered concurrently with 
it. There are undoubtedly definite relations between certain classes of solar 
phenomena and phenomena of terrestrial magnetism. The probability of definite 
relations between solar and terrestrial meteorological phenomena is also generally 
admitted. 
Data for the determination of these relations are being rapidly accumulated, 
and numerous problems connected therewith are waiting and ripe for investigation. 
They are too large and complex to be undertaken by present English methods, 
and can only be attacked by a body of trained investigators under arrangements_ 
securing the continuity of method and thought requisite for the prolonged 
systematic inquiry gradually leading up to their complete solution, 
It would hence be desirable to enlarge the scope of the central institution 
I have suggested, so as to include in its field of labour the investigation of the 
relation between solar and terrestrial meteorvlogy and magnetism, so far as they 
can be solved by the comparison of the observations of the British Empire. 
The central institution would thus have large and definite fields of work and 
most interesting problems for investigation. It would hence contribute towards 
the formation of a body of scientific meteorological investigators adequate to the 
importance and wants of the empire, and be of the highest educational as well as 
scientific value. 
My predecessor in this position, Dr. Shaw, the head of the English Meteoro- 
logical Office, made some remarks in his Address last year which deserve repe- 
tition in connection with this idea. He said: ‘The British Empire stands to gain 
more by scientific knowledge, and to lose more by unscientific knowledge, of the 
matter than any other country. It should from its position be the most important 
agency for promoting the advance of meteorological science—in the first place 
because it possesses such admirable varying fields of observation, and in the 
second place because with due encouragement British intellect may achieve as 
fruitful results in this as in other fields of investigation.’ 
The establishment of the central institution as suggested above would provide 
a remedy for the defects pointed out by Dr. Shaw. The reorganisation of the 
English Meteorological Office is, I believe, under consideration. Is it too much 
to hope that a strong expression of opinion on the part of the British Assuciation, 
and the influence of the learned University at which its present meeting is held, 
would induce the English Government to spend an additional 5,000/. or 10,0002. 
annually for the promotion of meteorological investigation and the establishment 
of a central Imperial institution in London in connection with its Meteorological 
Office ? 
