Meteorology is of invaluable assistance in other ways: in warning our coasts of coming storms; in deciding the climate and consequent healthfulness of the different parts of the country.
You can't even build a new town successfully without it, for only by accurate meteorological observation can the two most important factors of water-supply and sewerage be dealt with. For example, in planning a new waterworks, the ground subject to the greatest rainfall, and having the utmost gathering capacity, must be selected; while in constructing the system of sewerage, it is essential for the surveyor to accurately gauge the force and volume of the heaviest thunder-shower. If this is miscalculated, pipes of insufficient capacity may be laid with disastrous results to the city and its inhabitants.
These things are only to be learned by a study of meteorology.
Few people have any knowledge of the science beyond that supplied them by the forecasts and charts in the daily papers. Consequently the charts, which are more or less abstruse, are only understood by the few, and the forecasts are indulgently tolerated as a description of useless fortune-telling, rendered respectable by scientific recognition.
The popular idea seems to be that certain scientific men who have given the subject considerable study, cast a knowing eye on the evening sky, and pass on written prognostications for use in the morning papers.
HOUSES WRECKED BY A TORNADO.
As a matter of fact the method by which we obtain our weather reports and forecasts is very different, and savours even more strongly of romance than the clairvoyant system usually identified with the seers of the weather office.
Two institutions look after our weather—the Meteorological Office, a Government department with a grant of £15,000 per annum, and the Royal Meteorological Society, a scientific institution maintained by the subscriptions and donations of its members.