Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 36.djvu/563

Rh of the ordnance survey in Ireland, he was charged with the meteorological observations on the Bencorr and Keeper Mountains. These observations were published in 1836. From 1833 to 1836 he was assistant at the Madingly Observatory, near Cambridge; was appointed in the latter year assistant in the astronomical department of the Greenwich Observatory; and was made in 1840 Superintendent of the Magnetical and Meteorological Departments of the same institution, where he remained till he retired from the public service at the end of 1874. In 1865, upon the death of Admiral Fitzroy, he was appointed to the control of the meteorological department of the Board of Trade. From 1841 till very recently he has contributed to the registrar-general's reports the quarterly and annual meteorological reports embodying the results of the reductions and discussions of the observations of about sixty voluntary observers scattered over England.

Among Mr. Glaisher's earlier contributions to the literature of meteorology were the "Hygrometrical Tables," first published in 1845, which has passed through six editions, and is regarded as a fundamental work in connection with the science; "A Memoir on the Radiation of Heat from Various Substances," 1848; certain papers on the forms of snow-crystals, 1855; a report on the "Meteorology of London during the Cholera Epidemic of 1853-'54," published by the Board of Health in 1855; and a report on the "Meteorology of India in Relation to the Health of the Troops," 1863, which formed an appendix to the report of a Royal Commission on the Army in India. In 1857 he conducted the experiments and wrote the report of the Royal Commission on the Warming and Ventilation of Dwellings. He was the founder of the Royal Meteorological Society, of which he was the secretary for nearly twenty years, and the president in 1867-'68. He is a past President of the Royal Microscopical Society.

As a member of the British Association he has been active in the meteorological researches undertaken under the direction of that body; and we find his name attached year after year to the reports on "Luminous Meteors," "Rainfall," "Rate of Increase of Underground Temperature downward," "Circulation of Underground Waters as related to the Water-Supply of certain Towns and Districts," and "Mathematical Tables." The reports on "Luminous Meteors" were particularly minute and exhaustive. They seem to have been intended to include as full and accurate accounts as it was possible to get of every meteor that fell anywhere on the earth within the view of a man intelligent enough to describe it; and they embody frequent suggestions as to the direction which future research might take. Thus, the report of 1874 noticed the apparent connection between some