Untitled-1 © 1908 Nature Publishing Group 10, 1908] .NATURE 173 s•luutu Utsappear. Of course it is theoretically possible that average length s hould decline without average weight, owing to the reduced competition for food attend- ing a thinning of the population-though in that case the uttlity of a size-limit is not obvious-but in all probability the discrepancy is due to paucity of data in one or the other of the areas, and will disappear with the collection of more information. The point does, however, emphasise the importance of testing the adequacy of samples of fish used for statis tical purposes, a matter which is dealt with in another paper of the volume on the Ymuiden plaice measurements. The secretarv concludes hi s official record of the con- ference wit h a reference to the 'reception of the council by the King, a nd with pleasa nt, if a little quaint, ex- pressions of thanks to the institutions and gentlemen who constituted themselves ho sts, and to the clubs which " opened their hospitable lo calit ies " to the members. The seco nd volume before us is devoted to the seals of northern Europe. The material used was collected by Hjort and Knipowitsch, and is of the most diverse character, ranging from zoological literature to the journals of sealing vessels. The intention in dealing with this data ;vas to give accounts of the biology, econo mic value, and tnfiu ence on fisheries of seals, and to arrive at conclusions on the question of their extermination. The first of these purposes is admirably carri ed out by Dt·. \Volle- brek in a paper well illustrated by charts and plates, the acco unt of the distribution and migrations of the seals being especially interesti ng. The r epor t is in two parts, a Norwegian and a Ru ssian, and it is evident that the value attached to sea lin g by the Russians their sympathising greatly with Norwegian proJects for the extermination o f these animals. The ch arges against the seals are that Phoca vitulina damages the salmon fisheri es, which is generally admitted, and that P. J;roenlandica, P. f oetida, and P. vitulina also damage the fishery for the cod which follow the " Lodde " (.lfallotus villosus) to the coast of Finmark, in exceptional years causing its complete fa ilure. The damage done by hordes of fish-eating seals in the exceptional " seal " vcars such as 1902-3, must be very grea t ; yet the report undoubtedly have gained in value had more attention been paid to the admitted possibilitv that the exceptional conditio ns which brought the seals al so drove off the fi s h. The hydrographic conditions of the yea r s in question were so exceptio na l that they may well h ave determined the f;1ilure o f the fisheries; yet they receive but brief recogni- t ton, and the resulting impression is somewhat that of a trial confined to speeches for the prosecution. One feels that , were the seals eliminated, the Lodde fisherv would possibly sti ll be liable to sudden failure. • The third publication und er notice is one of a series iss ued at fairly regular interva ls, and contains the detailed hydro graph ic and plankton ol:>servations made bv the vessels em ployed in the internatio n a l researches during the first quarter of 1907, together with illu stra tive charts and sections. The periodic prepnration of these bulletins must be n seve re tax on th e time and ene r gies of the but th e resulting r ecords sh ould b" of great to those studying the North Sea and English Ch a nn el. THE Dil TVN OF METEOROLOGY.' METEOROLOGY as a science is young, but as a . br:lllch of knowledge very old, perhaps as old as rn anktnd. Indeed, the beginnings of meteoroloctv are to he found with the origin of hum an civilisa tion. "'·In those times •. man living as hunter or agr iculturist mostly •.n th e open atr was more influ en ced by, and more depend- mg on, the weather than we are ourselves at present, and he was therefore forced to w a t ch Gttmospheric phenomena. He did so, _of cours-;. not in order to study the atmosphere '" rl to drscovcr rts laws, but to derive immediate ad\·antages ·for himself. l-1 e was to lea rn how to protect hi s house against th e inclemency of the weather, how to foresee the best atmospheric co nditions for his 1 .Abridger{ from a lecture bf'( ·te th e R0yal }\feteorolog:iral Soc!ety bv Prof. G. J-lellmann, and printed in the Quarterly Journal of the Society, Oc tober, I9"J8. :"\0. 2::l4I, VOL. 79) und ertakings, or how to find out the most favourable c timati c situations for his ·field s. The experience of the more intelligent men in this re- spect was handed down, and at the same time augmented, trom ge-nera tion to generation, and formed very early an essential e lement in the knowledge of the peopl e. It was the popular weather-wtsdom which is still living now adays , and will never die. This w ea th er knowledge soon assumed the form of short proverbs , or rather absolute rul es , because thus they were easily committed to memory. It would, therefore, be wrong to imagine that the rtch store of weather -lore found in the Bible, especially in the Book of J ob, in the poems of Homer a'nd Hesiod, that is, in writings of the eighth century B.c., originated then in Palestine or Greece. On the co ntr ary, the familiarity of the people with the sayings and rules concerning the weather, revealed to us by these writings, shows clearly that they must be considered eve n then as a primeval stock of culture . Indeed, there is everv r eason to believe that t h e origin of a great deal even of the modern weather- lore can be traced to its Indo-Germanic source. People attribu te a good deal of prognostic signification to the so-called " twelve nights " (or " tw elve days "), which formerly were counted from th e beginning of the year, but later, under the influence of the Christian Church, from Christmas. People believe that th e weather of these twelve nights (or days) corresponds with that of th e twelve months of the following year-indeed, a rather simple fore- cast of long range if it were true ! This supe rstition is met in th e whole of European literature back to the fifteenth century, and still earlier in many MSS. Also the V e nerable Bed e mentions it; and the Byzantine-Greek work on agricu lture, called " Geoponica," whi ch was col- lected in th e sixth century A.D., tells us that eve n Demo- critus, in the fifth century B.c., was familiar with it in p retty much the same form. On th e other hand, we learn from the Sanskritists that the old Indian or Vedic texts reveal the same belief in the tw elve nights as a symbol of the following twelve months. But this superstition not only spread westwards with the Indo-G erma nic race, it migrated a lso eastwards to China, where on New Year's Day a c ustom is still. in use which is based on the same Inrlo-G ermanic concepti on. Another superstitio n concerning the weather leads us to old Babylonia. Many European chapbooks of past cen- tur ies , and a little Swedish book, " Sibyllre Prophetia," which is so ld to-day at fairs, co ntai n forecasts of the weather and fertility of the whole yea r deduced from the thunder heard in each of the twelve months. These signa tollitrui can be followed up in MSS. until the Middle Ages, and go back apparently to the rich literature of almana, or drip (Fig. 3) . Now it happened. that this book of H ero on pneum a tics, which must have been widely distributed already in MS., was translate d in the eighteen years between 1575 and 1592 no less than twice into Latin and three times into Itali an. It was studied by Galileo, Porta, and Drebbel, and gave, ab out the year r6oo, to a ll thr ee men the idea of cons tructing a thermoscop e, a nd to the last one also the impulse of making an exper im ent on the origin of the winds. From this it appears th ere is an interesting co nn ec.tion between the science of two remote periods with an interval of time of more than r8oo years . As I said before, the Greeks were also the first to start theories of meteorological phenomena . Indeed , since the time of the oldest philosophical school, that of Ionia, there are few Greek philosoph ers who were not interested in some branch of meteorology . This covered a wider field of research then than at present, besides meteorology in the modern se nse,. a lso a gooa' deal of physical geography and astronomy, es pecia lly shooting- stars, m eteo r s, and comets. The favouri t e meteorological sub jec ts of spec ulation and r esearch seem to have been the origin of the winds, the theory of th e rain, including th e regular inundation of the Nile, and the rainbow. A good many cosmological speculations w ere also put for- ward by the meteorologists which often proved false, and, considered from a practical point of view, in all cases rath er useless, whence in the period of Socrates meteor- ology itself came into disrepute. But notwithstanding, meteorology made some real pro- gress in time, and reached such perfection a century later that the sy_stem established by Aristotle remained for nearly two tho u sand years the standard text-book of our science. To_ be sur e, considered from a modern point of view , A.nstotle 's meteorology was antiquated long ago, but if you imagine yourselves back in those old times you 'will agree with me that his treatise of meteorology-the earliest , NO. 2041, VOL. 79] one existing-is a n exce ll en t piece of work, and well worthy of th e greatest systematiser of a ll times. I shou ld go too far if I were to ana lyse here the merits and dem erits of Aristotle's meteorology. It may be sufficient to say that his most distinguished successors, such as Theophrastus and Posidonius, have added but little to the perfection of his system, which, on the con- tra ry, gave rise to innumerable commentaries and para- phrases. All text-books of m et eo rology issued on the Continent until the end of the seven t een th century are excl usively based on Aristotle, whereas, curiously enough, in England his infl uence was much less . If I except Duns Scotus I do not know a ny British scholar who has written a on the meteorology of Aristotle, and even this on e has quite r ecently been disputed. It is true the number of trea t ises o n meteorology published in Great Britain be fore 1700 is unusuall y small compared wifh that issued contemporaneousl y in Germany, Italy, and Fr a nce, in Latin or th e vernacular langu age. Englishmen seem always to have been more inclined to mak e actual observa- tions of the weather than to th eorise upon it and to write svstematic treatises on meteorology. 'Among the Romans meteorology made but little pro- gress, like a ll other sciences of no imm ediate practical value. Pliny, Seneca, and Lucretiu s do not add any re- markabl e fact or theory to the knowl edge of the Greeks, and probably the same can be said of the lost writings o f Nigidius Figulus and Suetonius Tranquillus. From Virgi l we lea rn some new weather-pr overbs • originating in Ita ly, and a writer on agriculture, Columella, who own ed a large estate nea r Cadiz in Andalusia, has left behind a " Cale nd arium Rus tic um," o r rural c-alendar, with m a ny interesting weather observa tion s made in that district. The extensive colonial possessions of the Rom ans we re, of course, suitable for advancing th e conceptio ns of climatological differences of the countri es . As the great military expeditio n of Alexander the Great to inner Asia and Indi a had brought to the Greeks the first knowledge of the monsoon winds, so the Rom ans were the first to point out th e difference between th e continental and mari- time climate. :Vlinucius Felix, a Christian writer from Africa, Jiving in the second century A.D . , says, conce rn- ing the climate of Great Britain, " Brit annia sole deficitur, sed circ umflu entis maris tepore recr ea tur , " tha t is, fr ee ly tran s lated, " Britain has little su nshi ne , but a mild climate o n account of the wa rm sea-wa ter flowing round it." The barbarous state of Europe a ft er the fa ll of the vVestern Empire was not adapted to the furthering of sc ience, which was barely kept alive within the Christian Church, Y et the pursuit of meteorology neve r wholly ceased, for the Fathers of the Church, writing commen- taries on the work of the seven days, the so-called Hexaemeron, often took occasion, wh en dealing with the first day of the Mosaic Creation, to insert long elaborations on the atmosphere and its phenomena . At th e very beginning of the Middle A[!es the great encyclopa?dists, such as Isidorus Hispa lens is in Spain, the Venerable Bede in Great Britain, and R abanus Maurus in Germany, were the first to devote more a ttention to meteorological qu es tions, the interest in which must have bee n considerable in England, for in the tenth century an extract of Bede 's w ritings, concerning astro nomy and m eteorology, was made for the uniniti ated in th e Anglo- Saxon langu age, which is perhaps th e earliest treatise on science written in a popular form. It contains chapters on the winds, rain, hail, snow, a nd thund er. A general revival of studies took place at the end of the twelfth century, when the writings of Aristotle, among whi ch was his " Meteorology," came to the knowledge of the ·w este rn students by Latin translations made in Spain from the Arabian ones, not from the Greek originals. The imposing meteorological system of the great Stagirite again exercised a great influence on the writings of the scholars and on the teaching in the recently ('stablished universities, where, under the title " Meteora," regular courses and eve n exercises in were held. Albertus Magnus at Cologne wrote at this time his great meteorological works ("De Meteoris." libri iv., and" De Passionibus Aeris "), paraphrasing chi efly those of Aris- totle, but ad ding also the opinions of other authorities © 1908 Nature Publishing Group 1VATURE [DECEMBER 10, 1908 and his own remarks; and at th e same tim e, or somewhat later, Vincent de Beauvais in France, Thomas de Can tim pre in Belgium, Ristoro d 'Arezzo in Italy, Bartholomew Anglicus (or de Glanvill a ) in England, in- corporated the Aristotelian id ea s in their cncyclop::cdic works all bearing the general titl e " On the Nature of Things" ('' De Natura Rerum"). But th e firm and absolute adh er en ce to the doctrines of th e m as t er, Aristotle, the denying of all that could not be found in his writings, rendered th e scholastic meteorology so n oxiou s to any real progress that it came into conflict with all new ideas. Notwithstanding, these forced their way by and by, and the beginnings of th e modern experi- me ntal sci e nce arc to be found ju s t at that epoch when schola s ti c is m had reached its high es t point, namely, in the thirtee nth ce ntury. It is not yet definitely se ttl ed wh er e th e new experi- m ent a l science took its origin-most likely contempor- a neously in France and in Engl a nd, wh ere th e two friends Pi err e de Maricourt (Petrus P eregrinu s) a nd Roger Bacon can be considered as the first grea t r eprese ntatives of the ne w a ims. The former, a French nobl em a n and military engineer, is the author of the famous tre a tis e on the magnet, and m a de many optical experiments lik e his English friend ; a nd a lthough both have not d ea lt with meteorology properly s pea king-except the rainb ow-ye t their general influ ence must have been great on our scie nce also. Roger Bacon's energetic opposing of th e exp erim e nt to the argu- ment-" a rgumentum non s ufficit, sed experientia," he says in hi s " Opus Maju s " - condu ced naturally to the observing of atmospheric phe nom e na instead of only inter- pret ing the writings of the an cie nt s . Thu s the ne w aims advan<:ed m e teorological observations also, for which the ground wa s well pre pa red. As I have just shown, such observations w er e m a de in antiquity and never h a d wholly ceased, d es pite fr equ ent and long inter- rupti o ns . For the custom of th e Rom a n historians to note in th e ir annals the more important a tmospheric pheno- m ena, especially those necessitating sac rifices, was handed down to the chroniclers of th e Middl e Ages, whose chronicl es became richer and ri ch er in entries of the w ea th er, until at the end of th e thirt ee nth centurv these r ec ords ar e so replete wi t h r emark s on the that th e characte r of the seasons could be trac ed back. Now the time is ripe for mor e sys te m a ti c observation s , a nd w e find at Oxford \Villi a m M erl e, a fe llow of Merton Co lleg e, to whom remains th e d is tin ction of being the fir st man in the Occ idental world to k eep a r egular journal of th e w ea th er day by day. It e mbr aces th e years 1337 until 1344· The journal is prese rv ed at the Bodleian Libra r y . It is the earliest known journ a l of the weather, k ept a t Oxford and later at Driby in Lin colnshire where \Villi a m Merle was rector. ' A c lose examination of the circum s ta nc es forces me to th e conclusion that ·william M erl e w a s induced to make r egul a r observations by the d esire t o asce rtain the correct- ness of th e prognostics made by him se lf a nd his colleagues Oxford, where meteorology, or, m o r e properly speak- m g , a stro-m Pteorology, had b ee n fl o uri shin g since the time of Robe rt Grosseteste, the famou s Bi s hop of Lincoln. Merl e himself has left behind t wo MSS . on th e foreca s tincr of th e weath e r, and his contemporan eou s fello w of Colleg e, John Eschendon (or As he ndon), whose name has b<'.en corrupte.d into Eschuid , co mpl eted in 1348 a volu- mtnous tre a tt se of astra-m e t eo rol ogy bearing the title " Summa judicialis de accid e ntibus mundi." It was printed a t V e nice in 1489, and served in the sixteenth ce ntury as a text-book at the Univ ersity of Vienna. The work is u sually quoted in met eorological literature under th e a bbreviated title " Summa Angli ca n a," and is now extn;mely rare. Wh en, eighteen years ago, th e jou r na l of \Villiam Merle was r e-discovered, it seemed to sta nd a ll alone, since we h ct d no knowl edge of other ob se rv:lli o ns m a de in England or a bro ad but recentlv I have bee n a ble to find out a nea rl y continued sequence of ser ies of s u ch observations. and to prove that from th e fourt ee nth to th e middle of the se ve nteenth centuries , na m ely , until th e invention of me teorological instruments th e w ea th e r wa s regularly observed in many plan's in C entr :ll a nd \ Ves tern Europe. NO. 2041, VOL. 79) I had noticed that some copies of th e large astr6nom.ical. work, publis hed in 1499 by Ju st u s Stoe ttl e r and Jacob Pflaum at Tiibingen, " Almanach n ova plurimis annis venturi s inse rvi entia," containing eph e m erid es for the years 1499 t o 1531, w ere full of meteorol ogi ca l e ntri es written on the bro ad margins. This induc ed me to make sy s temati c inquiry into copies of the work n a med contain- ing .su ch entries preserved in th e great libraries of G e rm a ny, Au s1ria, and Switzerland. 'fh e r esult of this inquiry was rather astonishing. No few er than 123 diff er e nt ser ies of meteorological obse rv at ions belonging to th e fift ee nth, sixteenth, and s eve n teenth ce nturies were found . Considering that this numb er of necess ity repre- s e nts but a small proportion, and con cern s only some parts of C e ntral Europe , we may sa fe ly. presu me that in the whole of Europe their number mu s t h a ve bee n far greater. Some .-o f th ese early series of w eath e r obse rvation s are even corres ponding ones , made by agre em e nt. A fr es h stimulus for observing ca m e a t th e end of the fift ee nth ce ntury from quite anoth er direction. The great di scove ri es of n ew lands and se a s considerably enlarged and wid e ned old ideas and con ce pti-o ns . Atmospheric phe nom e n a never seen before came to th e knowledge of man, and clim a tes very different from thos e a t home became know n . Intelligent men were struck by such varieties, and w e ca n cl early observe their e ff ect on th em in the writings of th a t epoch. Luis de Ca m i'\ cs . the famous Portug u ese poe t, described in his epos , '' Os Lusiadas," for th e fir s t ti m e minutely the w a te r-s pouts ofte n observed by him off th e co a s t of Guinea and the s torm s in the South Indian O cea n , while from the log book k ept by Christopher Columbu s durin g h is fir s t voyage w e lea rn the deep impressi on h e got from the differe nce of and wea th e r in the Atlantic beyond th e Azor es compa r ed with th a t eas tw a rd s of the islands. Su ch n ew o bse rvations adv a n ced m os tly the doctrine of the wind s , whi ch was now mor e fully e xpounded in Spanish a nd Portugu ese works, until in th e vear 1622 Francis Bacon w a s the first to publis h a special treatise dealing entirely with the winds. But m ea nwhile experimental scie nce, the growing up of whi ch I h a ve just alluded to, was so much developed th a t in th e first half of the seventeenth century the prin- cipa l m eteorologic al instruments w ere invented. To Italv belongs the glory of being the native country of instru- m e nta l m ete orol og y , the cradle of which stood at Florence. These inve ntions proved the first step in making meteor- ology a sci e nce , and now the shadows of th e dawn are fas t di sa ppearing be fore the full light of the r isi n g sun. UNIVEHSITY AND EDUCATIONA.L INTELLIGENCE. friends of the Chancellor desire the establishm e nt of some award to be a ssoci a ted with Lord Rayl eigh's name, in order to comme mor a te the unanimous el ec ti o n of a sc ientific investigator to th e o ffice of Chan- cellor of th e U niversitv. With this obi ect th ev have de- posi ted a s um of money at thco bank, inter e;t of which may b e u sed fo r the purpose of awarding fr om time to tim e a pri ze to be called the Rayleigh prize . It is pro- posed to a djudi ca t e these prizes at th e sam e time and by th e sa m e a djudicators as the Smith's prize . The vVals in g ham medal for 1908 h a s bee n a warded to C. C. D o bell for his essay entitled (1) "Proti sta Parasitic in Frogs a nd Toads," (2) " Chromidi a a nd th e Binuclearity H y poth eses " ; and a second Walsingham m edal to G. R. Min es a nd D. Thoday. Mr. Min es's essay was entitled "The Spo nta neous Movements of Amphibi a n Muscles in S a lin e Soluti ons," and Mr. Thoday's essay was entitled " In cr ease of Dry vVeight as a M easure of Assimilation." Lord vV a lsingham has expressed his willingn ess to give, this yea r, a bronze replica of the m ed a l to each of the candid a tes a w a rded the second m ed a l. Th e medal is award e d fo r a monograph or essay giving e vidence of original r esearch on any botanical, geological, or zoo- lo g ical s ubj ec t, 7.0ology being unde r s to od to include animal morphology and physiology. E ssay s for th e e ns uing year ar e to be se nt to th e chairman of the s pe cial board for biol ogy a nd g eo lo gy (Prof. Langley , The Museums) not late r th a n O c tob er 10, 1909. THE DAWN OF METEOROLOGY.1