165 
CAN WEATHER BE PREDICTED IN THE 
BRITISH ISLES? 
By R. H. SCOTT, F.R.S., E.G.S., 
Director of the Meteorological Office. 
S OME of our readers may have heard of Arago’s famous saying,. 
in the “ Annuaire of the Bureau des Longitudes ” for 1846,. 
“ Jamais, quels que puissent etre les progres des sciences, les 
savants de bonne foi et soucieux de . leur reputation ne se hasar- 
deront a predire le temps,” and yet, within fifteen years after 
that dictum was published, a regular service of storm warnings 
had been organized in England, France, and Holland; and 
now, at the expiration of thirty years, we could name more than 
one “savant de bonne foi et soucieux de son reputation” who 
considers the prediction of weather to be a subject of investiga- 
tion which promises reasonably satisfactory results. 
When we speak of the prediction of weather, however, we 
refer more particularly to the prediction of storms or of transient 
disturbances of the atmosphere ; for if we come to consider the 
problem of really foretelling weather for the practical purposes 
of the farmer — of informing him, months beforehand, what 
crops he may put into the ground with a reasonable prospect of 
a paying return, or even days beforehand, when he may cut his 
hay or reap his corn with a fair probability of saving it without 
rain, we must admit that we have not made one step in advance 
of the position laid down for us by Arago thirty years ago,. 
What is our most recent experience ? A rainfall in the month 
of December of 5*82 inches in London, being three times the 
average fall in the month for the last sixty years, and exceeding 
by 1 6 per cent, the very heaviest fall in December during that 
period. To go a little further back, the year 1872, in its wide- 
spread and persistent rainfall, was almost unparalleled since 
accurate measurements have been kept ; the total excess over 
the United Kingdom amounting to 36 per cent, of the annual 
fall, and surely we might have expected that some years’ respite 
from the plague of waters was due to us, — but what have been the 
real facts ? Only three years later, in the autumn of 1875, the 
damage caused by successive floods exceeded anything that 
modern records showed : and a short fifteen months later, in the- 
