REPORT ON METEOROLOGY. 
211 
is to be hoped that the facilities which military stations offer 
for fulfilling this most important object will not be neglected. 
The only thermometrical register of great extent which 
has been undertaken, except that of Toaldo and Chiminello 
at Padua, and of Neuber at Apenrade, was executed by the 
military at Leith Fort, under the superintendance of the Royal 
Society of Edinburgh ; and an account of the results of complete 
hourly observations during the years 1824 and 1825 has been 
published by Dr. Brewster*. The results I consider most im¬ 
portant to science ; and they afford a proof, which I hope will 
not be overlooked, that meteorological observations have only 
to be conducted upon a right scale in order to afford results to 
a degree of precision scarcely exceeded by any of the physical 
sciences. The result I particularly allude to is the following. 
One principal object being to establish the particular hours, 
the mean of the temperatures of which for the whole year 
should equal the mean of the whole tw r enty-four hours, it is 
obvious that one of these critical times must occur in the morn¬ 
ing, the other in the evening. The observations for two years 
have given the following extraordinary coincidence : 
Hour of Morning. Hour of Evening. 
Mean Temp. Mean Temp. 
1824 . 9 h IS' .8 h 2 6' 
1825 . 9 18 .8 28 
Mean 9 18 8 27 
Such a series of normal observations ought to be made in 
every extensive country ; for the critical hours vary materially 
with the latitude, and also with the height above the sea. At 
Paris, for example, the mean temperature occurs before 9 
o’clock in the morning. At Padua the critical hours were 
8 h 41 7 a.m. and 7 h 52' p.m. But notwithstanding this consi¬ 
derable variation, occasioned by a difference of 11° of latitude, 
the interval elapsed between the morning and evening mean is 
remarkably constant. At Padua it was 1 l h 14'; at Leith 1 l h 12 r ; 
at Apenrade, in Denmark, 11 h 1 V'\. It is to be hoped that the 
exertions already made by the British Association for the esta¬ 
blishment of an hourly register near the equator, and also one 
in the South of England, will be successful, as the results would 
be of the highest interest for science. 
Some of the other most important consequences deducible 
from the Leith observations are the following: 
* Edinburgh Transactions, vol. x. 
f Sckouw Beitrdge %ur vergleichcnden Klimaiologie. 1827. 
O 2 
