238 Modern Advances in Meteorology. [April, 
has been, for the most part, to relate changes of wind and 
weather to the state of the barometer ; and innumerable 
rules have been propounded to enable everyone to become 
weather-wise by the aid of a barometer. ... A sort ot 
elixir of them has been distilled and bottled up on the 
barometer scale, to satisfy the craving for condensation, toi 
knowledge formulated— in short for Science, which humanity 
manifests. I refer to the lettering on the scale, with which 
we are all familiar, which, however little objedtionable in 
cities like London and Paris, when it got abroad among the 
hills and mountains in the interior of continents, and away 
on oceans, appeared sometimes grotesque, not to say 
Id surd ^ 
Now the great advance from these untrustworthy guesses 
from solitary observations arose from the systematic obser- 
vation over large areas. Such observations revealed ^that 
over a storm area the atmospheric pressure was distributed 
in a singular and symmetrical way ; that while all great 
storms and tempests whirl round a calm centre or nucleus, 
this nucleus, or “ eye ” of the cyclone, has the lowest baro- 
meter while the pressure increases all around in widening 
circles to the Outmost regions of the storm. Moreover, it 
is known that in the northern hemisphere all such storms 
rotate round the centre of depression in the opposite direc- 
tion to the hands of a watch. The relation to these cyclones 
of certain centres of greater barometric pressure, or anti- 
cyclones, which usually bring fine weather, and around 
which the winds sweep in an opposite direction, is carefully 
One other quotation we must make from this excellent 
lecture, respecting the well-known hypothesis of a connexion 
between the cycles of sun spots and the cycles of weather 
and storms : — , , 
“As regards annual values of barometrical observations, 
no periodicity has yet been traced for them. They appear 
to me to afford the most precise data for investigating the 
sun-spot cycle as connected with weather. There are no 
a priori reasons known to me for supporting that theory, and 
I consider the great amount of labour expended in bolstering 
it up as very much misapplied, and the whole thing as a 
wild-goose chase, on such paths as the rainfall, the black- 
bulb thermometers, and aurorae. Only I would remark that 
if it be proved that the sun-spot maximum coincides with a 
barometer minimum, and the sun-spot minimum with a 
barometer maximum in India, there must be some region or 
regions where the law is reversed, otherwise we should have 
