38 
ABBE. 
tliai a union of all the nations of the globe must be effected 
before we shall be able to do justice to the fundamental prob- 
lems of meteorology and climatology. To this society and 
to Hemmer and Brandes, Germany owes her right to the 
claim of having taken the first steps toward the study of 
dynamic meteorology. 
Simultaneously with Brandes but undoubtedly quite inde- 
pendent of bis work, the leaders of American meteorology — 
Redfield in New York and Espy in Philadelphia — began a 
life-long series of studies, at first on the geometrical and after- 
ward on the kinetic relations of winds to storms, and of 
storms as a whole to the adjacent atmosphere. The U. S. 
Army Medical Corps, the U. S. Land Office, the Regents of 
the University of New York and others organized systems 
of reports to which the Smithsonian eventually succeeded. 
These organizations were primarily for the study of cli- 
mate, hut in 1842 Espy was appointed “Meteorologist to the 
U. S. Government” and with that began our national or- 
ganization of cooperation with him and the Smithsonian 
Institution in the study of American storms. Between the 
theoretical cyclonologists and those who adhered more 
closely to the records of observations active discussion con- 
tinued from 1820 until 1870, and prepared all thoughtful 
minds to receive the more correct views of the next gener- 
ation of students based on the study of daily weather-maps. 
THE CONSTITUTION AND PROPERTIES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 
To the chemists and physicists meteorologists owe a long 
series of researches on the constitution and properties of the 
atmospheric gases. This work may be said to have begun 
with Boyle next after the less important work of European 
alchemists. Galileo had shown that the air has weight. 
Otto von Guericke had so constructed his first air pump, (as 
shown by the pictures, although he himself does not say so 
in words,) that the heavy air should flow down and out of the 
vessels from which he would pump it as he pumped water. 
But it is to Boyle that we owe the idea that there is an elastic 
spring in the air, and also that the air is a complex combina- 
