OOTOBEB 9, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



461 



success, with which perhaps my hearers are 

 not familiar. 



In this country there is a widespread 

 idea that meteorology achieves its object 

 if by its means the daily papers can give 

 such trustworthy advice as will enable a 

 cautious man to decide whether to take out 

 his walking-stick or his umbrella. Some of 

 us are accustomed to look upon India as a 

 place of unusual scientific enlightenment, 

 where governments have a worthy appre- 

 ciation of the claims of science for recog- 

 nition and support. But Eliot was never 

 tired of telling me that it was the admin- 

 istration of India, and not the advancement 

 of science, that the Indian administrators 

 had in view; and among his achievements 

 the one of which he was most proud was 

 that the conduct of his office upon scientific 

 lines during his tenure had so commended 

 itself to the administrators that his suc- 

 cessor was to be allowed three assistants, 

 with special scientific training, in order 

 that the state might have the benefit of 

 their knowledge. 



It is, of course, easy to suggest in ex- 

 planation of this success that the Depart- 

 ment of Public Works of India can not 

 afford to be unmindful of the distribution 

 of rainfall, and that there is an obvious 

 connection between Indian finances and 

 Indian droughts; but it is a new fact in 

 British history that the application of sci- 

 entific considerations to the phenomena of 

 rainfall are of such direct practical impor- 

 tance that meteorological information is a 

 matter of consequence to all government 

 officials, and that meteorological prospects 

 are a factor of finance. Imagine his Maj- 

 esty's Chancellor of the Exchequer calling 

 at 63 Victoria Street to make inquiries 

 with a view to framing his next budget, or 

 taking his prospects of a realized surplus 

 from the ' ' Daily "Weather Report. ' ' Yet in 

 India meteorology is to such an extent a 



public servant that such proceedings would 

 not excite remark. 



To have placed a scientific service on 

 such a footing is, indeed, a notable success. 

 Again, I rely upon Eliot when I say that 

 that success is only to be achieved by being 

 constantly on the watch to render service 

 wherever service can be rendered. There 

 is a difference between this attitude and 

 that which has for its object the contribu- 

 tion of an effective paper to a scientific 

 publication; in other words, it must be 

 frankly recognized that the business of the 

 scientific departments of government is not 

 to raise an occasional mortal to the skies, 

 but to draw down as many angels as are 

 within reach. I was much surprised, when 

 Eliot wished to develop a large scheme for 

 meteorological work on a wider scale, that 

 he made his appeal to the British Associa- 

 tion as chairman of the Subsection for 

 Cosmieal Physics at Cambridge, and there- 

 by to the governments of this country and 

 the colonies. He felt that he could only 

 urge the Indian government to join, and he 

 did so successfully, so far as India would 

 be directly benefited thereby, however im- 

 portant the results might be from a purely 

 scientific point of view. Strange as it may 

 appear to some, it was to this country that 

 he looked for assistance, on the plea of the 

 increase of knowledge for its own sake, or 

 for the sake of mankind at large. 



I am disposed, therefore, to carry your 

 thoughts a little further, and rely on your 

 patience while I consider another aspect 

 for the process of drawing down the angels 

 from the mathematical and physical sky, a 

 process which is sufficiently indicative of 

 the functions of a state scientific depart- 

 ment. Viewing the world at large, and not 

 merely that part of it with which we are 

 ourselves immediately concerned, such de- 

 partments deal with celestial physics in 

 astronomy, with the physics of the air in 

 meteorology and atmospheric electricity. 



