FIG. 114. Curve-parallels. Curves of variation of rainfall from year to year. (H. H. Hildebrandsson) 115. Dot-diagrams and regression-lines of pressure and temperature 116. Curve-parallels and a dot-diagram for the variations in the ,, 117. Synoptic chart of Western Europe for March 6, 1783, con- ,, 119. (i) "Circular Letter to Meteorological Observers" by Sir Francis Galton in 1861 page 280 282 284 118. Synoptic charts for October-November 1852 constructed by Buys 299 304 306 120. (i) Prospectus of the Daily Weather Map Company 307 308 309 (ii) Galton's synchronous weather-chart of England, 16th 121. Chart prepared by Alexander Buchan to show the travel of 310 The authorities to whom acknowledgment is due for the several illustrations are noted in the respective titles in the foregoing list. Figures 2, 11, 104, 107, and 113, which are taken from official publications, are reproduced by permission of H.M. Stationery Office. The derivation of the portrait-groups and separate portraits which face pages 156-7 and 206-7 is as follows: The International Congress in Rome, 1879, and the International Conference at Paris, 1896, are from framed copies preserved in the Director's room of the Meteorological Office at South Kensington. In the same room are the portraits of Admiral FitzRoy presented by his daughter Miss Laura FitzRoy, Sir Richard Strachey presented by Lady Strachey, Sir Francis Galton presented by his nephew Mr E. G. Wheler, and Dr Richard Assmann by his daughter Fraülein Helène Assmann. That of Alexander Buchan is from a photograph by Elliott and Fry, Ltd. The portraits of H. W. Dove and James Glaisher are from cartes-de-visite presented by the late J. S. Harding, Admiral FitzRoy's chief clerk and secretary in the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade. The picture of Luke Howard is from a copy of a pencil drawing in possession of the Royal Meteorological Society; those of Sir E. Sabine and John Welsh are from a collodion positive of a portrait-group belonging to Kew Observatory, taken at Vauxhall on the occasion of one of Welsh's balloon ascents. Those of Buys Ballot and G. J. Symons are from commemorative medals in the possession of the author. The other portraits are from published works, J. B. Biot and M. F. Maury from Harper's Monthly, by permission of Harper Brothers, U. J. J. Le Verrier from the volume commemorating the centenary of his birth, H. F. Blanford from the Administrative Report of the Indian Meteorological Department for 1924, S. P. Langley from the commemorative volume of the Smithsonian Institution, J. M. Pernter from the Meteorologische Zeitschrift, R. Abercromby and W. H. Dines from the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society. The other picture, which is by Knudsen of Bergen and is not named, will be recognised as an effective snapshot of the meteorology of the future. CHAPTER I METEOROLOGY IN EUROPEAN CULTURE Babylonian, Egyptian, Cretan civilisation The Northmen The Mediterranean revival The North-Western intrusion 18000-1800 B.C. A.D. 400-1200 A.D. 1200-1600 METEOROLOGY is the science of the atmosphere, or, with a certain limitation of meaning, the study of weather. The word is sometimes used as being synonymous with weather itself. It has been stated that meteorology is of great importance to armies and to navies, to ships and to farmers, although when the statement is made the seafaring man, the husbandman, and the soldier may have little interest in the science of the atmosphere. It is indeed true that weather is of urgent and vital importance for every section of the human race, it always has been so and always will be; but whether those who study the atmosphere can put their experience, and the knowledge derived from it, in such a form that practical folk like sailors or soldiers will regard it as important is quite another question; and whether it can be so represented as to challenge attention from those who are interested in science is again something quite different. Many books have been devoted to expounding the importance of meteorology in its practical applications. This book is concerned with the possibilities of its importance as a science, as a subject of study for its own sake, interesting to those who are interested in the study of their own environment. Hitherto the interest in meteorology has been dependent mainly upon the extent to which the community felt itself unprotected against the weather; and on that account has been subject to notable fluctuations, especially in recent times when protection has been found in buildings, clothes and new means of transport and communication. At the beginning of the nineteenth century when sea-travel was still by sailing-ships and land-travel was on horseback or by coach, attention had to be paid to the study of weather; every sailor was a practical meteorologist, all professors of natural philosophy regarded meteorology as part of their province and the subject engaged the unremitting personal attention of such influential persons as John Dalton and Luke Howard. The interest culminated in the establishment of official meteorological departments in the early sixties and the evolution of the weather-map. But changes had already come in: sea-travel was by steamer and land-travel by rail. The community found itself more or less immune. Meteorology lost its place in the universities and was left to official organisations and special societies. The position is most clearly expressed by noting that the Government grant for meteorology in this country which had increased fivefold between 1854 and 1882, remained quite stationary for a quarter of a century thereafter, though the operations were under the highest scientific direction. In 1899 the Royal Society when asked to obtain funds for pensions gave expression to the almost inhuman sentiment that there ought to be pensions but the funds should be provided by sacrificing activity. Fluctuations on a smaller scale are easily remarked. When the art of flying began, all phases of weather were important; but by the time the war was over the aviator's interest was mainly confined to fog and wind above clouds. Conditions have however changed again, the development of travel by air over long distances and the spread of wireless facilities have almost restored the enthusiasm of sixty years ago. The Government spends on meteorology eight times as much as it did before the war. The fact however remains that all along from the earliest times the importance of meteorology has been conditioned by the utility of its applications, particularly in the anticipation of future weather. The claims for interest in the subject for its own sake as giving an insight into nature have been recognised only by a comparatively few devoted observers. But these are the claims which are connoted by meteorology as a science and which are the subject of this book. THE PRACTICAL IMPORTANCE OF WEATHER What is it moulds the life of man? The weather. What makes some black and others tan? The weather. What makes the Zulu live in trees, The Congo natives dress in leaves (W. J. Humphreys, Weather Proverbs and Paradoxes.) Enthusiasm for meteorology is perhaps a peculiar experience; but it is not difficult to become enthusiastic, and, in favourable circumstances, even eloquent, about the importance to mankind of the atmosphere and its changes. If meteorologists have failed to interest their fellow-men therein it is not for lack of importance in the subject of their study, for the atmosphere is the chief element in man's physical environment. It is the breath of his life. With less than enough within him or about him he feels stifled; under the genial influence of the sun it provides his food and drink, and against its changes he is careful to provide himself with shelter; it is indispensable alike for his bodily warmth, for all his own physical energy and for that of his transport, his camels, his horses, his sailing-ships, his steamers and his motorcars. The larger part of man's life-history consists in his endeavour to adjust himself to the ways of the atmosphere, to its habits in respect of wind and weather. His interest in the air has been vivid and unremitting. It is altogether insufficient to say that with some nations the study of weather has been connected with religion. The religions of mankind have been in large part formed out of the ideas which prolonged experience has engendered about the control of the atmosphere. Human lives have been sacrificed in order to propitiate or conciliate the powers that rule the air1. Perhaps even 1 Mexico, Hibbert Journal, October 1923. at the present day the greater part of mankind, following the examples of Greek and Hebrew poets, regard weather as under the personal control of the supreme deity into which it would be impious to inquire. In English law "the act of God" is still a legitimate plea for exoneration of damages for injuries to person or property if the circumstances are so exceptional as to be unforeseen. Small indeed is the fraction of mankind who are like-minded with the Greek philosophers and regard the vagaries of the atmosphere as subject to natural laws, and are unwilling to believe them to be past finding out. This diversity of attitude was as conspicuous in the ancients as it is in the moderns; we shall deal with it more fully in the sequel when we glance at the references to weather and its control which are to be found in the poets and the philosophers of the ancient world. It has had some important consequences for the study because the idea of the personal control of weather by a major or minor deity has led to the confusion of those who pursue the scientific study of the atmosphere with its worst enemies-the rain-maker, the magician, and the temple-minder who accepts sacrifices in order to propitiate a deity. CIVILISATION AND THE STUDY OF WEATHER We may regard the religious practice of a people as the expression of their relationship to their environment, which includes inanimate nature on the one hand and living beings on the other, and therefore we might fairly expect the story of the weather to be coeval with that of civilisation, and intertwined with its records, its legends and its religions. This aspect of history is not without interest for students of weather. According to the teaching of the new anthropology1, human civilisation was autochthonous in ancient Egypt, and spread from there over the world with subsequent subcentres of diffusion in Babylonia and India. This view may not be accepted but it arrests attention by the circumstance that Egypt, and especially the Egypt of the early Egyptians, the Thebaid, is that part of the world which is most nearly independent of what we understand by weather. It draws its water-supplies from the river and takes nothing but dew from the sky. It has winds generally so arranged as to temper and mollify the burning effect of the sun's rays, seldom strong enough to raise a dust-storm and practically free from the terrible visitation known as simoom. At the same time it is wonderfully fertile with very little effort on the part of the husbandman. They take the flow o' the Nile By certain scales i' the pyramid; they know By the height, the lowness, or the mean, if dearth And shortly comes to harvest2. 1 Nature, vol. сXII, 1923, p. 611. (Antony and Cleopatra, II, vii, 20.) 2 Measures of the height of the Nile go back to 3600 B.C. H. G. Lyons, The Physiography of the River Nile and its Basin, Cairo, 1906. |