The Present State of Meteorology. 11 



few hours ahead, and will at once admit his inability to 

 deal with the facts of meteorology as he would with those 

 of any of the physical sciences. 



Attempts have also been made, upon scientific grounds, to 

 deduce from a discussion of seasonal mean temperature the 

 probable characteristics of coming seasons ; to ascertain if 

 there be a periodicity in climatic vicissitudes, as well as to 

 generalise in other ways from past experience. As an instance 

 of these attempts^ I may refer to the very clever and exhaust- 

 ive paper by my friend and co-labourer, Mr. H. C. Eussell, 

 of Sydney, given to the Royal Society of New South Wales, 

 entitled "Meteorological Periodicity;" but while this paper 

 is one of the most valuable extant for reference on the 

 subject of Australian meteorology, it clearly indicates the 

 apparent hopelessness of any such attempt in our present 

 state of knowledge, and certainly no satisfactory results have 

 been deduced from the other investigations referred to. 



Almost every civilised country at the present time is 

 provided with a principal meteorological observatory or 

 observing station, generally assisted by various other 

 stations of more or less importance, according to position 

 or instrumental appliances, either wholly or partly sup- 

 ported by public money. Besides these there are always 

 numerous careful and energetic private observers, who 

 voluntarily furnish the central observatory with the 

 results of their work. I know of no country or place of 

 importance where settlement and civilisation have reached 

 from whence meteorological records cannot be obtained ; 

 and if one can judge of the extent to which meteorological 

 facts have been collected from the piles upon piles of manu- 

 script records at the Melbourne Observatory, not only from 

 these colonies, but from various regions of the broad ocean, 

 from desolate islands and other places, leaving alone the 

 weary number of volumes, sheets, and pamphlets which 

 arrive from other countries, I think I am perfectly safe in 

 saying that in no branch of inquiry has such an enormous 

 amount of statistics been collected as in meteorology. 



Now one of the chief, if not the chief, object in instituting 

 meteorological observations in any country at the public 

 cost, may be assumed to be climatology — for economic, sani- 

 tary, andj perhaps most of all, for agricultural purposes ; to 

 ascertain by a long extended series of observations the range 

 of temperature, rainfall, movements of air, &c., to which the 



