Proceedings. 167 



read by one of the SECRETARIES in the unavoidable absence 

 Of the author : — 



" In the first half of this century Meteorology was a 

 purely statistical science. It is now gradually becoming a 

 branch of Hydro-dynamics andThermo-dynamics. Statistics 

 is still its chief weapon of research, but it is no longer blind 

 statistics led hither and thither by the guesses of the 

 enquirer, for its line of attack is regulated by our knowledge 

 of the laws which determine the motion of a gaseous medium, 

 and of the complicated effects which accompany evaporation 

 and condensation of moisture. The Society has recently 

 lost two of its ordinary members, Balfour Stewart and 

 Baxendell, who have both done much to establish meteoro- 

 logy on the sound basis on which it now rests ; and 

 it has now to mourn the loss of an honorary member, who, 

 by common consent, occupied the foremost place amongst 

 the founders of the new science. 



"Buys Ballot was born October 20th, 1817, and although 

 he once held a chair of Mathematics and Geology, and 

 published papers on various physical and chemical subjects, 

 he ultimately turned his attention entirely to Meteorology. 

 I am not sufficiently well acquainted with his work to give 

 the Society an adequate idea of all he accomplished, and must 

 confine myself entirely to a short account of what must be 

 considered the chief result of his labours. When Buys 

 Ballot was in the prime of life, the authority of Dove at 

 Berlin was still all-powerful in matters of meteorology. 

 Dove had done much to systematise the science, and to 

 encourage its scientific study. He had found a purely 

 empirical law, which seemed to indicate a regular change in 

 the direction of the wind. A north wind he found was 

 more often succeeded by an east wind than by a west wind, 

 and a south wind was more often succeeded by a west than 

 by an east wind. In other words, the weathercock more 

 often turned in the direction in which the hands of a watch 



