1886 .] 
Chairman s Address. 
13 
Great Britain, and situated in the very track of the south-westerly 
winds from the Atlantic, which exercise so preponderating an 
influence on the weather of Europe, hut because it rises to a height 
of 4406 feet so close to the sea that a sea-level station may be 
placed at about 4 miles from the summit — a consideration which 
gives a value altogether unique to the observations. 
The low-level station was established at Fort William, under the 
charge of Mr Livingstone, of the Public Schools, at which observa- 
tions are made five times each day, and with these are conjoined a 
barograph and thermograph for the continuous record of these im- 
portant elements of climate — atmospheric pressure and temperature. 
Three years’ observations at this pair of stations have already been 
made, and it is these which are now in the hands of the printer, and 
will shortly appear as a volume of the Society’s Transactions. 
The climatic difficulties were great, but they were successfully 
surmounted (1) by the skill of the architect, Mr Sydney Mitchell, 
who constructed the buildings, (2) by the heroic endurance and 
fertility and readiness of resource displayed by Mr Omond and his 
staff of assistants in meeting emergencies as they arose. 
At most, if not all, other observatories only a comparatively few 
of the observations are made by the observers personally, the usual 
course being to use continuously recording instruments from which 
the omitted hours are interpolated. But on Ben Nevis every re- 
corded observation is actually noted by the observers. Further, it 
usually happens that the observations of the temperature, humidity, 
and movements of the air, and the rainfall are automatically recorded. 
But on Ben Nevis, during the larger portion of the year, owing to 
the snow-drifts and ice-incrustations formed on the instruments as 
well as on everything outside the Observatory exposed to the wind, 
these observations cannot, and, it may be confidently predicted, 
never can, be made by self-recording instruments. Hence, if meteor- 
ology and weather prediction are to make advances in those funda- 
mental inquiries, which can be successfully prosecuted only by the 
help of high-level observatories, the time will never come when such 
heroic services as are now rendered to science by Mr Omond can be 
dispensed with. Even barometric observations could not be utilised 
in these inquiries, unless there be conjoined with them observations 
of the temperature and the movements of the atmosphere. 
