1866.] 



Presidenfs Address, 



271 



printing of the Catalogue of Scientific Papers, in the preparation of 

 which we have been so long engaged, was at length commenced. Twenty- 

 eight quarto sheets are now printed and eight more are in type. The work 

 would now have been further advanced, had not the Superintending 

 Commitee in the mean time obtained access to additional Periodical Works, 

 containing Memoirs deserving to be included in the Catalogue, and too 

 numerous to warrant their being postponed for a supplement. The printing 

 has therefore been interrupted for a time in order to allow of the insertion 

 of these additional titles in their proper places. Moreover, proofs of every 

 sheet are supplied to several of the Members of the Library Committee who 

 separately revise them ; and this mode of proceeding no doubt somewhat 

 protracts the work, but it has the more than compensating advantage of 

 securing the greatest attainable accuracy. 



The attention of your Council has been much occupied in the past year 

 in complying with a request from Her Majesty's Government for the advice 

 and co-operation of the Royal Society in the re- organization of the Meteo- 

 rological Department of the Board of Trade, and in preparing the prelimi- 

 nary arrangements for the establishment of a system of British Land- 

 Meteorology to be carried out under the authorization of that Board. 



Perhaps there is no branch of scientific research in which a greater 

 amount of human labour has been expended than has been the case in 

 Meteorology, — a natural consequence of its intimate connexion in so many 

 ways with the interests and pursuits of man ; and it may perhaps be said 

 with equal truth that there is no department of natural knowledge in which 

 the labour bestowed has been of a more desultory character, or the value 

 and importance of the conclusions less commensurate with the time and 

 labour bestowed on their acquisition. The object to be desired, therefore, 

 is scarcely so much to give a stronger impulse to the spirit of inquiry, as 

 to aid in giving to that which exists a more systematic direction. This 

 has been attempted in several of the continental States of Europe and 

 America, by the establishment at the expense of the respective govern- 

 ments, and under the superintendence of men eminently qualified by 

 theoretical and practical knowledge, of systematic climatological researches ; 

 and, as regards the individual states themselves, it may be confidently said 

 that the results have been very beneficial. 



For some time past it has been desired to establish a closer connexion 

 between these independent and separate systems of observation, by effect- 

 ing an assimilation of instrumental means, and of the modes and times of 

 observation. It was chiefly in this view that the assemblage took place by 

 special invitation, at the Cambridge Meeting of the British Association in 

 1845, of the Directors of the principal meteorological (and magnetical) 

 observatories in Europe and America ; and that a second meeting took place 

 at Brussels in 1853. The difficulty that impeded success on these two 

 occasions cannot be better stated than in the words of Captain Maury, in 



VOL. XV. z 



