METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATORIES. 151 



which represents, as far as a figure can, the character and qualities of 

 the particular wind which it faces. 



For instance, the north wind, which is cold, fierce, and stormy, is 

 represented by the sculptured figure of a man warmly clad and blowing 

 fiercely on a trumpet made out of a seashell. 



The northeast wind, which brought, and still brings, to the Athenians 

 cold, snow, and hail, was figured by an old man with a severe counte- 

 nance, and who is rattling sling stones in a shield, a good way of express- 

 ing emblematically the noise and power of a hailstorm. 



The east wind, which brought, and still brings, to the Greeks a gentle 

 rain, favorable to vegetation, is expressed by the image of a young man 

 with flowing hair and open countenance, having his looped up mantle 

 filled with fruit, honeycomb, and corn. 



Zephyros, the west wind, was indicated by the figure of a slightly 

 clad and beautiful youth with his lap full of flowers. And so with the 

 other winds all round the compass; each has its qualities fixed in stone 

 by its appropriate sculptured figure, and we have here a most interesting 

 evidence that the climate of Greece has not materially changed, at any 

 rate in respect of winds, after the lapse of about twenty centuries. 



The tower had a vane on the top made to represent a Triton, who 

 turned with the wind and waved a brazen rod over the figure which 

 portrayed it. This tower is described by Yitruvius and other ancient 

 authors, some of whom call it a horologium, and they suppose it con- 

 tained a water clock, or clepsydra, to mark the hours during the night 

 and in cloudy weather when the fine sundials with which the building 

 is decorated would not be in operation. This seems at first confirmed 

 by certain pools and gutters which have been found in the floor, and 

 which it would have pleased me very much to claim for some rainfall 

 or evaporation recording purposes. 



The names of the various winds are written upon the faces of the 

 building in good Greek letters, so that all might read whether Boreas or 

 Kotus, Apeliotes or Sciron — there is a sound and fury in the very 

 names — were bringing to them comfort or disaster, as the case might be. 1 



For those who could not read there remained the emblematic signs 

 which told them the story in stone, and which served like fossils in a 

 rock to carry down the tale even to our own days. 



The principal use of the temple was probably in order that the devout 

 might offer prayers and gifts in view of obtaining the wind and weather 

 they most required for nautical and agricultural reasons. It must 

 be confessed that the building was rather badly situated for a mere 

 observatory. 



OBSERVATORIES. 



About modern observatories it is my intention to give a few descrip- 

 tive particulars on, first, national observatories, of which our own at 



1 Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens, vol. 1, where will be found numerous 

 illustrations of the tower and its ornamentation. 



