^839] 



Literary and Scietitijic Intelligence. 



451 



X. — Literary and Scientific Intelligence. 



Our meteorological correspondents will be glad to learn that their 

 observations are valued and will be turned to account by Sir John Her- 

 scHEL, who thus writes to us from H^inover, under date 24lh July 1838. 



" When I left the Cape, 1 desisted from the further prosecution of 

 the solsticial and equinoxial observations, but my best thanks are due to 

 all those gentlemen who have supplied me with corresponding obser- 

 vations, and it will be one of my first objects, so soon as I shall be re- 

 turned to England and in possession of a fixed residence, as well as of 

 all m;/ papers, and of some degree of leisure, to enter upon the task of 

 their arrangement and reduction — to do justice, in so far as in me lies, 

 to the great zeal and ability manifested in the communications of the 

 observations which have reached me from various q uarters. 



" I regret to say, however, that the stations at which these observa- 

 lions have been made have neither been sufficiently numerous, nor 

 (except in some f;;w cases) the observations at each sufficiently conti- 

 nuous, to enable me to draw any general conclusions from them. Bevond 

 the latitudes -{-'iO and — 40, indeed, as I have already taken occasion to 

 state in a circular addressed to all my meteorological correspondenty, the 

 epochs themselves are not sufficiently numerous; and to be of service the 

 observations would require to be prosecuted monthly instead of quarterly, 

 and pursued for many successive years, in stations systematically dis- 

 tributed. 



" In India, where the meteorology is more simple and determinate, 

 even a single year's series, is capable of affording interesting information, 

 and I shall therefore be very glad to see the observations to which you 

 allude, as being made at three stations* in Southern India. In all cases I 

 would recommend that such observations should be published in the 

 scientific Journals most accessible at the points where they are made. 

 The transmission of MSS. is hazardous and circuitous, and there is a 

 great advantage in placing the data on which theories are to be grounded 

 as early and extensively as possible before the public." 



* Madras— Trevandrum— and Hoonsoor. We regret that we have not received them 

 from the latter station since March 1838.— Editor. 



