110 
ating or mapping the atmosphere at successive times ; and 
thence to deduce the order of those changes of wind and 
weather which affect navigation and fisheries especially/’ 
In September, 1859 — or two months before Dr. Buys 
Ballot appears to have made his first proposal on the subject 
to the Dutch Government — the British Association for the 
Advancement of Science met at Aberdeen under the presi- 
dency of the Prince Consort, and, the question being brought 
before them, it was then resolved by their Council that 
application should be made to Her Majesty’s Government 
for an organisation and trial of a plan by which the approach 
of storms might be telegraphed to distant localities. 
At two meetings in Buckingham Palace early the follow- 
ing year (1860), minutes were authorised on this subject, 
and correspondence ensued which resulted in establishing 
a telegraphic communication of meteorological facts between 
twenty home stations, besides foreign ones. 
When the British Association met at Oxford in July, 1860, 
a paper was read by Admiral Fitzroy on the measures pro- 
posed for meteorological telegraphy, which obtained approval 
without eliciting any opposition. 
Advancing gradually, the first cautionary or storm- 
warning signals were made early in 1861 — on the 5th 
and 6th of February. 
In further confirmation of the hitherto undisputed fact 
that it is to the zeal and energy of Admiral Fitzroy (and 
those only who had the advantage of his intimate acquaint- 
ance know how great and vexatious was the opposition that 
his plans encountered from certain quarters) that England, 
and to a great extent Europe generally, is or was indebted 
for her system of cautionary signals, I will merely quote the 
following paragraph from Sir Henry James’s “Instructions 
for taking Meteorological Observations,” published in 1860. 
Sir Henry James observes — “It is unnecessary to point 
out the vast importance of being able to foretell the advent 
