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ILLUSTRATIONS OF 
V. Meteorology. Mefeorology will deserve 
from our Society much consideration. The time is 
now arrived when this infant science should emerge 
from its present helpless state^ and present some 
great general truths that may lead to progressive 
discovery. 
Your Committee on this subject will have to 
describe the climate and general weather of our 
county, and the causes of any peculiarities ; and 
to keep exact records of diurnal changes, and annual 
or other differences of the atmosphere, as to tempera- 
ture, dryness, calmness, and electrical phenomena. 
Your Committee will not fall into that very general 
mistake by which it is supposed that meteorology, as a 
science, has no other object but an experimental 
acquaintance with those variable elements which from 
day to day constitute the general and vague result of 
the state of weather at any given spot. Such hetero- 
genous elements can be of little avail when viewed 
simply as a group of facts towards forwarding any 
one end of the science, or giving us any precise 
knowledge regarding it ; but the careful study of 
these individual points, when grouped together with 
others of the same character, may afford valuable 
aid to scientific generalization. 
A new impulse seems of late to have been given 
to meteorological inquiries, in consequence of the 
interesting reports that have been presented upon this 
branch of knowledge to the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, and I have no doubt 
your Committee will avail themselves of these reports, 
