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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
HOW THE WEATHER IS MADE AND FORECAST.
BY MEAD AND STREAM.
THE NEW MEDIÆVAL ROOM AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
ONE WOMAN’S HISTORY.
AN EDUCATIONAL PIONEER.
THE MISSING CLUE.
THE MUSK-RAT OF INDIA.
A DAY IN EARLY SUMMER.
No. 44.—Vol. I.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1884.
HOW THE WEATHER IS MADE ANDFORECAST.
In the minds of foreigners, it is held to be oneof the many peculiarities of the people of theseislands that so much of their casual conversationconsists of remarks on the weather. The nationaltemperament is often held to be responsible forthis failing; but some of the blame must nodoubt be laid at the door of the weather itself.Our climate presents such a record of changeand uncertainty, that we need not wonder if it isalways in our minds, and the first subject on ourlips when we meet a friend. Other lands mayhave their cold and hot, dry, and rainy periods,that come round in the proper order year afteryear with unvarying monotony; but with us itmay be said of the weather, that we rarely knowwhat a day or an hour may bring forth. Eventhe seasons seem occasionally to be independentof any necessity of visiting us at the particulartime of the year at which we have been taughtto expect them. Spring weather in November,or a winter temperature in July, or a Novemberfog in the merry month of May, all seem to beamongst the possibilities of our climate.
Happily, our meteorologists are at lengthbeginning to define with growing clearness andconfidence the laws which underlie and regulatethe complicated and ever varying phenomenawhich we call the weather, and many of theselaws, like most natural laws, are beautiful in theirsimplicity. Although ‘weather wisdom’ is asold as history itself, the science of the weatheror meteorology is a growth of the last few years.The weather wisdom of our forefathers may inthe light of present knowledge be divided intosense and nonsense. Under the nonsense maybe included not only such proverbs as thatwhich attributed to St Swithin’s day and certainother times and seasons, occult influencesover the weather, but most of the informationof the old almanacs, which used to ascribe thecharacter of the weather to the positions andmovements of the heavenly bodies and the ageand changes of the moon. The prevalence of thebelief