ON THE ATMOSPHERIC CHANGES WHICH PRODUCE RAIN, WIND, STORMS, AND THE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE BAROMETER. BY THOMAS HOPKINS. PUBLISHED BY SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & CO. LONDON, AND SIMMS & DINHAM, MANCHESTER. 1844. LIBRAP INTRODUCTION. ** For many years meteorological phenomena, in Lancashire and its neighbourhood, had engaged a portion of my attention. The winter of 1837-8 I passed in Rome and Naples, where my thoughts were directed to the climate of those places; and, on my return to England, I determined to make inquiries into the causes which produce the atmospheric peculiarities of those parts. What I met with in books, written professedly on meteorology, appeared obscure and unsatisfactory, and I resolved to employ a portion of my leisure in collecting, from travellers, facts likely to throw some light on the subject, and particularly to endeavour to trace the laws of nature in the department of meteorology, where she operates on a large scale: believing that, in so moveable a body as the atmosphere, that was the best course to adopt, in order to see the separate working of each The facts collected in this way at first appeared little better than a mass of contradiction and confusion, but, by putting them into the form of tables, and constructing charts and diagrams, to assist the mind by presenting pictures to the eye, slowly and gradually the influence of general principles appeared as pervading the whole. The facts which were apparently opposed to those principles were then subjected to a more careful examination, and the result was an arrival at the conclusions presented in the following pages. Some of those conclusions were, from time to time, communicated to the Manchester Philosophical Society, and they are now submitted to the public. If they have truth for their basis, they will, probably, be adopted by others; if they have not, I shall only add one to the list of those who have failed in attempting to explain the causes which determine the movements of the atmosphere. cause. |