FITZ-ROY WEATHER FORECASTS. 
267 
fact, and there is no evidence of their utility [! ! !] and we see 
no good reason why a government department should continue to 
undertake the responsibility of issuing them,” or, as they else- 
where in their report express it : — “ There is no evidence to show 
that the daily forecasts have been correct in point of fact, or that 
we are enabled — as Admiral Fitz-Roy declared — to know what 
weather will prevail during the next two or three days, and as 
a corollary, when a storm will occur ; on the contrary, the 
evidence points strongly the other way.” 
I do not in the least desire to impugn the bona fides of the 
Committee of Investigation nor to deny that their report contains 
much that is interesting in itself and of suggestive practical 
value, still their bias against Admiral Fitz-Roy is manifest. The 
strongest part of their case is where they allege that one of the 
leading defects of the Forecast system which they found in 
operation at the Board of Trade was that everything was con- 
ducted too much by rule-of-thumb, or as they put it ; tf Many 
conditions and probabilities of weather are capable of being 
stated in the form of laws and some of them are laws which 
would be accepted by meteorologists generally ; the probabilities 
are in many cases considerable, and especially in the important 
cases of sudden and violent changes of weather,” but they cc do 
not find that these conditions and probabilities have been reduced 
into any definite or intelligible form of expression, nor are they, 
as they now exist in the office, capable of being communicated 
in the shape of instructions. Were the gentlemen now in the 
department to leave it , no rules would be found in the office for 
continuing the duties of their present basis.” We are bound 
to receive this as an accurate statement, but it is not easy to 
reconcile these words of the committee with the fact that they 
have themselves presented us with a digest of twenty-four 
practical maxims which embody, as they imply, the leading 
principles upon which Fitz-Roy and his able colleague Mr. 
Babington actually were in the habit of preparing the forecasts 
of the weather. After all, then, it seems that some rules, or at 
least some materials for framing rules, have been found in the 
office and by the committee themselves, despite of their con- 
fident assertion that nothing existed “ capable of being communi- 
cated in the shape of instructions,” for I assume that they would 
hardly attempt to justify such a statement as this by saying that 
the digest of maxims which they publish had no existence until 
they gave it one. This cannot be their meaning, I should think. 
Proceed we now to consider briefly the basis of the Forecasts. 
I have admitted that perhaps there was a certain amount of rule- 
of-thumb in what Fitz-Roy did, but inasmuch as greaft results 
were clearly achieved by him, it would be impossible not to be 
able to derive some benefits from the notes and memoranda he 
