166 



Anniversary Meeting, 



[Nov. 30, 



were required, and were furnished by them, of the probable cost of the 

 organization, and of the annual expense of the Observatories. In August of 

 the present year (1867) the estimates were passed in the House of Com- 

 mons ; and I have now the satisfaction of announcing, on the part of the 

 Committee, that they have reason to believe that in January 1868, being 

 not more than six months after the passing of the estimates, Observa- 

 tories supplied with self-recording instruments which have been prepared 

 and verified at Kew, working under competent superintendence, and with 

 a trained staff at each Observatory, will have commenced their observa- 

 tions at Falmouth, Kew, Stonyhurst, Armagh, and Glasgow, and that there 

 is ground of expectation that, in a month or two later, Valentia and Aber- 

 deen will be added to the list. 



The estimates passed in August 1867 will have defrayed the expenses of 

 organization and maintenance of these seven Observatories until the 31st 

 of March 1868 (the close of the present financial year). The continuance 

 of the Observatories must necessarily depend upon the disposition of 

 Government to recommend, and of the House of Commons to supply, the 

 necessary funds. The Superintending Committee of the Royal Society are 

 prepared for either alternative, viz. either to continue their general super- 

 intendence, or to regard their honourable and laborious undertaking as ter- 

 minated. In the former case, it will become their office to trace the 

 variations of the weather, as presented in the continuous and well-distri- 

 buted records over the area of the British Islands, viewed in conjunction 

 with the telegrams from the Ports and with the information received from 

 other countries, and thus so to contribute to a knowledge of the laws 

 which govern those variations as to enable meteorologists gradually, and as 

 far as may be possible^ to place the practice of forecasting the weather on a 

 sound and dependable basis. 



The Report of the Committee of the Board of Trade contains many valu- 

 able suggestions regarding the treatment which the information accumu- 

 lated in the ofiice of the meteorological department of that Board should 

 undergo, with the view of extracting from it the information it is capable 

 of affording on the meteorological statistics of the Ocean, and specially of 

 the parts most frequented by British ships. This great branch of meteo- 

 rological research, so eminently befitting a great maritime and commer^ 

 cial nation, was most prominently urged on the consideration of Her Ma- 

 jesty's Government by the President and Council of the Royal Society in 

 a letter dated February 22, 1855 ; and in the subsequent establishment of 

 the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade it was recognized as 

 being one of the chief functions of the office so constituted. The collection 

 of a very considerable mass of information, embodied in the logs of ships 

 to which instruments and instructions have been supplied, has been the 

 result ; but comparatively little advance appears to have been made in the 

 labour of extracting, collating, combining, and discussing the valuable 

 materials thus obtained. The work, both of collecting further informa- 

 tion, and of discussing and arranging for communication to the public the 



