METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES. 



By Richard Inwards, F. R. A. S., 



President of the Royal Meteorological Society, London. 



As meteorology is essentially a science of observation, the present 

 discourse will be devoted to giving some scant and scattered details of 

 a few of the different organized arrangements in various parts of the 

 world, for carrying on researches into the constitution of the atmosphere, 

 and the effects of changes in its condition from day to day. The sub- 

 ject of observatories is a wide one, and I shall not attempt to condense 

 the account of the whole world's work in this direction into the talk of 

 one short hour. There is a map which has been printed by Mr. Scott 

 to illustrate his address 2 from this chair in 18S5 on the condition of 

 climatological observations over the globe, which is instructive as show- 

 ing at one glance the points on the world's surface from which the 

 weather was systematically observed ten years ago. The map is shown 

 to be dotted over in nearly every quarter, but, as might be expected, 

 the dots are closer together near the great centers of civilization, while 

 vast portions of the earth's surface, in desert plains and among moun- 

 tains, on the oceans and in the polar regions, are practically barren in 

 this respect, and the movements of the atmosphere there remain almost 

 unstudied and unrecorded. 



ANCIENT OBSERVATORIES. 



In early savage times there is no doubt that keen observations, and 

 a system of weather guessing, represented the whole science of mete- 

 orology, and any prominent rock or tree served the purposes of an 

 observatory from whence the early hunters, fishers, or sailors anxiously 

 scanned the horizon for signs of the weather to come. Such a primi- 

 tive arrangement in New Guinea I now show you photographed, and 

 you will see that it is merely a dwelling in a tree, on the top of which 

 may be seen the anxious inhabitants peering into space, their sight, 



1 An address delivered to the Royal Meteorological Society, London, January 15, 

 1896. Printed in Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. XXII, 

 No. 98, April, 1896, pp. 81-98. The illustrations accompanying the article are omitted 

 in this reprint. 



2 Quarterly Journal, Vol. XI, pi. 4. 



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