VII. On the Horary Oscillations of the Barometer near Edinburgh, deduced from 4410 Observations; with an Inquiry into the Law of Geographical Distribution of the Phenomenon

Extract

1. The science of Meteorology must be ranked, at the present moment, among the most rising branches of natural knowledge. The transition from the hasty generalization which always marks the embryo state of science, to the application of sober inductive analysis, is one so important, and so truly interesting, as to repay amply the philosophical abstinence which it imposes. No more important lesson, indeed, can be learned, than from the very examples of crude speculation, which, for centuries, the progress of this subject has afforded among the multitudes whose scientific acquirements are limited to the art of consulting a weather-glass, or registering a thermometer, little imagining that the very science they affect to cultivate, ranks among its phenomena the interwoven effects of remote and recondite causes,—a science which, to use the words of Mr Herschel, is “one of the most complicated and difficult, but, at the same time, interesting subjects of physical research: one, however, which has of late begun to be studied with a diligence which promises the speedy disclosure of relations and laws, of which, at present, we can form but a very imperfect notion.”