Pressure and Temperature Results for the Great Plateau. 263 
the summer, the greatest near the end of the winter—some two 
months late for both phases. 
A phenomenon like this is worth elucidating. Sir George Airy, 
whose gird at meteorology—because it requires neither money nor 
brains; or aS he, more mildly, put it in the last report he wrote, 
‘perhaps because it requires little of expense or science”’ “—was 
quite a hardy annual, seems to have believed that all ever done, or, 
for that matter, likely to be done, by meteorologists (except at 
Greenwich, where the meteorological work is ‘‘the best in the 
world’’) was to pile inches, or degrees, and decimal parts upon 
previous similar observations: Pelion and Ossa upon Olympus. 
The meteorologist’s obvious retort is that astronomers have done 
their share of mountain piling in the past, with what they are pleased 
to describe as ‘‘fundamental’’ astronomy, and may do still more in 
the future, and yet not always succeed in scaling the high heavens. 
Neptune, for instance, was not discovered at Greenwich, nor would 
it have been later on, even though the Right Ascension of Uranus 
on, shall we say, 1847, August 31d. 14h. 27m. 38°9s. was somewhere 
about lh. 6m. 11°37s.! But although 
‘* etherique ingenio supposuere $20 
. non ut ferat Ossan Olympus 
sunumaque Peliacus sidera langat apex”? + 
may be occasionally true of astronomers, whether directed by Heaven - 
or the Admiralty, who would argue that the present enormous bulk 
of the present volumes of fundamental astronomy published as 
GREENWICH OBSERVATIONS should be curtailed? Not the meteor. 
ologist certainly. His only regret is that Airy should have risked 
adding to “hi montes”’ a Vale of Tempe by not inserting the 
necessary fourth decimal places, in seconds of arc, to the 1,294 
elegant star-positions for January 1, 1880. Is it not, for example, 
sacrificing a reasonable accuracy to a most unreasonable brevity to 
call the R.A. of Alpha Ceti 2h. 56m. 0:328s., when the seconds 
should be 0°3275? Still less would the meteorologist argue that the 
meteorological observations taken at any astronomical observatory, 
even though they be not discussed by the observatory staff, should, 
for that reason, be discontinued. The industry that has accumulated 
there will be thankfully recognised by some future Titan. It is, 
indeed, much to be regretted that observers have not been so 
industrious in South Africa. Here, when extensive sets of observa- 
tions are wanted, and that is at nearly every turn, they are not 
* Greenwich Observations, 1880. 
¢ Ovid, Fasti, Lib. i. 306, &e. 
