ABBE. 
36 
reads as though the spirit of Galileo had risen from his ashes. 
The volume was soon translated into Latin and English, and 
perhaps into other languages, and exerted a profound influ- 
ence upon the science of its day. 
Although meteorological stations were established in 1657 
in Italy, academies and societies of persons interested in the 
special development of meteorology began with the forma- 
tion of the Meteorological Society of the Palatinate, at Mann- 
heim, in 1780, followed by the meteorological societies ot 
France and England about 1850 ; Mauritius, 1860 ; Austria, 
1864; Italy, 1865; Scotland, 1874; Germany, 1883; New 
England, 1884, and Japan, 1885. Of course all the general 
scientific societies throughout the world have always included 
meteorology in some special section devoted to that and cog- 
nate subjects. 
The progress made since the formation of the Mannheim 
Society has been entirely in the direction of the line of work 
that this society laid out, namely, to collect data from all parts 
of the world for the purpose of compiling synoptic daily 
weather-maps for the study of the atmosphere as a whole. 
It is an instructive illustration of the slowness with which 
mankind progresses, to recall that at the close of the work 
of the Mannheim Society in 1795 twelve large folio volumes 
of observations had been printed, and much had been written 
about the relations between the weather in the different parts 
of Europe, but, so far as we know, without the actual prepa- 
ration of a single weather-map, although all its data were 
compiled and published for that very purpose. It was a 
famous physicist, Prof. II. W. Brandes, of Halle, the emi- 
nent author of a work on “The equilibrium and motion of 
solid and fluid bodies,” who, in two dissertations, “ Beitrage ” 
or “Contributions to our knowledge of the weather,” and 
“ Repentinis ” “A physical dissertation on the sudden varia- 
tions observed in atmospheric pressure,” Leipsic, 1820. 
finally drew from these ponderous volumes the data for a 
series of maps showing the circulation of winds around areas 
of low pressure, and thus opened the way for the study of the 
mechanical problems involved in storms. It must be con- 
