Meterology: A Text-Book on the Weather, the Causes of Its Changes, and Weather Forecasting for the Student and General Reader (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Meterology: A Text-Book on the Weather, the Causes of Its Changes, and Weather Forecasting for the Student and General Reader

This book owes its existence to a course on meteorology which has been given by the author in Williams College for the last eight years. This course is a Junior and Senior elective course with three exercises a week during a half year. A syllabus, covering both the text-book used and the added material, was prepared for the course. This was at first mimeographed, then revised and printed. Later it was again revised and reprinted. This book follows the order of topics in this last syllabus very closely, and is thus essentially a resume of the material which has been gathered for the course.

This book is essentially a text-book. For this reason, the marginal comments at the sides of the pages, the questions, topics for investigation, and practical exercises have been added, A syllabus of each chapter has been placed at its beginning, and the book has been divided into numbered sections, each treating a definite topic. The book is also intended for the general reader of scientific tastes, and it is hoped that these earmarks of a text-book will not be found objectionable by him. It can hardly be called an elementary treatise, but it starts at the beginning and no previous knowledge of meteorology itself is anywhere assumed. It is assumed, however, that the reader is familiar with the great general facts of science. References have been added at the end of each chapter. These include pamphlets and articles in the periodical literature as well as books. These are the first things which a student would naturally look up in order to gain further information. In appendix IX an attempt has been made to summarize the literature of meteorology. Here the books are arranged in alphabetical order without regard to age or value. Both the metric and English system of units and the Fahrenheit and centigrade thermometer scales have b…