REPORT ON METEOROLOGY. 
517 
although hitherto totally neglected. In France an excellent 
register, one of the standard ones in Europe, is kept up, by 
the assiduity of M. Bouvard, at the Observatory ; and several 
valuable series of observations have been produced by French 
expeditions in tropical regions. In Switzerland, Meteorology 
flourishes more than in almost any country in Europe ; and 
though its small extent gives little room for contributions to 
general climatology, other problems of the greatest consequence 
have been successfully investigated, as we shall immediately 
have occasion to notice. From Russia much is to be hoped 
for, in the prosecution of the science of Mean Temperature, 
which we believe is even now obtaining daily accessions of facts 
from observations in the remote regions of Siberia * * * § ; the zeal 
which has established magnetic observatories in various parts 
of that vast country -j*, will not, it is to be expected, neglect 
the union of some of the most interesting meteorological obser¬ 
vations with that of phenomena to which they are so intimately 
allied. But we wish particularly to allude to the exertions 
making in the United States of North America to elucidate the 
mean temperature of that important part of the globe,—one of 
the most interesting points, indeed, which can at present be ex¬ 
amined with a view to rectify our knowledge of the course of 
the isothermal lines, which, except at the equator, are hardly 
at all known in the new continent. A great number of Acade¬ 
mies scattered over this widely extended country, make an¬ 
nual reports of observations on the mean temperature, fall of 
rain, and natural phenomena, to the Legislature of New York, 
and the military stations have afforded extensive series of valu¬ 
able results J. 
Baron Humboldt has recently published an interesting Essay 
on the Causes of the Inflexions of the Isothermal Lines §. 
Without containing much of novelty, this little work gives some 
general and philosophical views upon climatology, pointing out 
the nature of the hourly and daily variations of temperature, 
the variable absorbent and emissive powers with regard to heat 
of the materials of which the visible surface of the earth is com- 
* See Humboldt’s Address to the Petersburgh Academy of Sciences, 28th 
November, 1829. 
f Humboldt, Kupffer. 
X Edinburgh Journal of Science , viii. 303. x. 2G7, &c.—In alluding to the 
exertions of different Governments for the advancement of meteorological 
science, I am happy to be able to add that of Prussia. I have had the good 
fortune to meet this summer (1832), in the Alps, M. Kamtz, a zealous member 
of the University of Halle, who had been sent on a scientific mission by the 
Prussian Government to establish some most curious facts in Meteorology.—- 
J. D. F. Dec. 1832. 
§ In his Fragments Asiatiques, tom. ii. p. 398. 
