DEDICATION.

ΤΟ

REAR-ADMIRAL ROBERT FITZROY.

MY DEAR SIR,

Ever since the time when you conducted me over the magnificent dockyards of your country, I have received so many proofs of your kind recollection of me, that I request you to allow me to dedicate the second edition of this work to you. This I am the more desirous of doing, inasmuch as it is to you that I am indebted for the translation of the first edition, which appeared in the Meteorological Papers,' and for the valuable additions which were then made to it.

Yours with sincere respect,

H. W. DOVE.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

In this Second Edition' the work has been so completely remodelled and enlarged, that I have added to the original title The Law of Storms '- the words, 'considered in connection with the Ordinary Movements of the Atmosphere.' In fact, these general considerations form the entire of the first half of this work. In the course of the thirty-four years which have elapsed since the appearance of my first investigations on the Law of Gyration and the Rotatory Movements of Storms, I have endeavoured, as far as possible, to supply, in confirmation of my theories, the empirical proofs, of which there were at first not many to be found. I have been careful to enumerate all such confirmations as I am aware of, and must apologise if I have, through ignorance of their existence, omitted to mention any. In contrast to the custom, which is unfortunately becoming every day more universal, of bringing forward facts which have been known for more than a century as if they were new discoveries of each author, I hold it to be the duty of everyone who selects the move

ments of the atmosphere as the subject of his investigations to state openly what we owe to men like Dampier, Halley, Hadley, and Horsburgh, in this branch of science. The problems which are presented to us by the atmosphere are too complicated to allow of their solution off-hand; and there will ever remain questions which earlier observers have been unable to solve. To be classed with such predecessors as those I have named is the noblest recompense which we can hope for in return for our labours.

BERLIN: June 10, 1861.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

In this translation I have, by Professor Dove's desire, embodied in the work itself the results of observations at Dorpat (p. 125) and at Toronto (p. 129), which only appeared in the Appendix to the original work. I have also added the tables for the year 1859 at Greenwich (p. 102), for Bermuda (p. 105), and for Melbourne (p. 115), which were received from the Author in the progress of the translation. Any additions which I have made in the way of notes are signed Trans.' The notes signed F.' have been transferred, by Admiral Fitzroy's permission, from the translation of the First Edition, which is contained in the third number of Meteorological Papers.'

6

The measures throughout the work have been converted to English inches, and the temperatures to their equivalents on the Fahrenheit scale. The quotations from all the works which were accessible to me in the libraries of Dublin have been taken from the originals. This has been the case with the quotations from Dampier, Halley,