Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/323

 of variability which may be anticipated in the march of each element. What is this but forecasting?" Every increase of simultaneous reports is, therefore, another approximation to that knowledge which would, if sufficiently full, enable the European meteorologist to foresee



and to give every day more timely forewarning of impending variations in the weather and "the march of each element." But this is the grand end which all such international research contemplates. "From the use of synchronous weather-maps," another prominent English meteorologist tells us, "there has sprung up in recent years a new science of the winds. With the principles of this science all the more reliable rules of weather-forecasting are most intimately connected. We no longer think of judging of coming weather merely by the aspect of the sky and an examination of an individual barometer. We invariably refer—I do not say to the weather-reports of a few hours previous, for we often have neither these nor any weather-reports at all at hand—but we invariably refer to rules already deduced from the long study of weather-maps. The man who ignores these rules had better, in my opinion, leave all attempts at weather-forecasting alone. At best his weather-lore will not rise much above that of the bees, which fly to the hive, often to their own detriment, whenever a dark cloud covers the sun." We cite these words as expressive of the wise dependence which the most skillful European meteorologists