Note 626 — Chapter VII

On the peculiar complications which have retarded meteorology, and thus prevented us from accurately predicting the weather, compare Forbes on Meteorology, in Second Report of British Association, pp. 249–251; Cuvier, Progrès des Sciences, vol. i. pp. 69, 248; Kaemtz's Meteorology, pp. 2–4; Prout's Bridgewater Treatise, pp. 290–295; Somerville's Physical Geog. vol. ii. pp. 18, 19. But all the best authorities are agreed that this ignorance cannot last long; and that the constant advance which we are now making in physical science will eventually enable us to explain even these phenomena. Thus, for instance, Sir John Leslie says, ‘It cannot be disputed, however, that all the changes which happen in the mass of our atmosphere, involved, capricious, and irregular as they may appear, are yet the necessary results of principles as fixed, and perhaps as simple, as those which direct the revolutions of the solar system. Could we unravel the intricate maze, we might trace the action of each distinct cause, and hence deduce the ultimate effects arising from their combined operation. With the possession of such data, we might safely predict the state of the weather at any future period, as we now calculate an eclipse of the sun or moon, or foretell a conjunction of the planets.’ Leslie's Natural Philosophy, p. 405: see also p. 185, and the remarks of Mr. Snow Harris (Brit. Assoc. for 1844, p. 241), and of Mr. Hamilton (Journal of Geog. Soc. vol. xix. p. xci.) Thus, too, Dr. Whewell (Bridgewater Treatise, p. 3) says, that ‘the changes of winds and skies are produced by causes, of whose rules “no philosophical mind” will doubt the fixity.’