Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/278

264 worker and investigator in electricity, magnetism, optics, crystallography, and in such practical subjects as measures and weights, and the metric system of civilized nations. Among other discoveries, he also first recognized the presence of a secondary electric current in a metallic wire, at the moment that the circuit of the principal current is completed. The large number of physical instruments originated and devised by his genius and skill, among them his polarization apparatus, his differential inductor, his rotating polariscope, and numerous other important devices, bear evidence of his many contributions to the advancement of physics.

But it was to meteorological, hydrographical, and climatological inquiries that Dove devoted his full strength and the great powers of his mind; and by his comprehensive and well-directed labors he has written his name in imperishable characters on the records of science. His fame rests preeminently on the successful inquiries which he carried out with a view to the discovery of the laws regulating atmospheric phenomena, which apparently are under no law whatever, and on his isothermals and isabnormals of temperature for the surface of the globe, in which labors one can not sufficiently admire the breadth of view which sustained and animated him as an explorer, during the long, toilsome years spent in, and requisite to, their preparation. Equally characterized by philosophic depth and by what really seemed a love for the drudgery of detail, even to profuseness, when such drudgery appeared necessary or desirable in attaining his object, are his various works on winds, the manner of their veering, and their relations to atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity, and rainfall, and the important bearings of the results on the climatology of the globe; and on the relation of the variations of temperature to the development of plants and their life and distribution. The origin of storms and their connection with the general circulation of the atmosphere has been much elucidated by Dove's comprehensive and exact researches; and the "laws of the rotation of the winds and storms," of so vast importance to the mariner, are for ever linked with his name.

Alexander von Humboldt had originated the Prussian Meteorological Bureau, and Dove, since 1848 its director, gradually organized, extended, and summarized throughout Germany, the valuable system of meteorological observations and publications, since widely and successfully accepted and introduced in most civilized countries.

When we consider the condition in which Dove found man's knowledge of the weather, and the large accessions and development it received from his hand, the breadth of his views, and the well-directed patience rising into high genius, with which his mind was inspired and his researches were pursued, there can be but one opinion, that these give Dove claims, which no other physicist can compete with, to be styled "the Father of Meteorology."