Abstract
THIS is the first number of a series of reprints of rare books relating to meteorology and terrestrial magnetism, edited by Prof. G. Hellmann, and, owing to the support of the German Meteorological Society and to a large amount of gratuitous labour on the part of Dr. Hellmann, the works, of which only a very limited number will be printed, are to be issued in a very cheap but elegant form, and will no doubt be much valued by students of those subjects and by persons interested in early literature. The Wetterbüchlein is the oldest purely meteorological work printed in the German language. The first edition was published in 1505, but inquiries made by Prof. Hellmann of 115 libraries in Europe have failed to discover a single copy, and of the second edition printed in 1510 only one copy can be found, viz. the one in Dr. Hellmann's library, of which a facsimile is now reprinted, together with an introduction of forty-two quarto pages, giving a most interesting and masterly account of this work and of all the other editions excepting two, of which no copy can be found. The Wetterbüchlein, which ran through seventeen editions in fourteen years, was exceedingly popular in its day, and contains in fourteen chapters a large number of weather prognostications, some of which are of an astrological character, but by far the greater part are based on optical and natural phenomena. The chapters are naturally of unequal value, but some of them contain results of importance deduced from a large number of actual observations. Many of the chapters have been traced by Dr. Hellmann to be based upon proverbs known to the old classical writers, and the author has also quoted freely from a work by Guido Bonatti, an Italian astrologer, which was printed in 1491, and from one by Firmin de Bellevall, a French writer, which appeared in 1485; but no clue can be found as to the origin of a chapter entitled “Das wetter zu wissen durch die vier quart des jars / als Liechtenperger setzt.” If any of our readers can discover the origin of this section we shall be glad to hear of it. The Wetterbüchlein was, to a great extent, reprinted in various editions of the “Bauern-Practick,” which appeared in the sixteenth century and had a much greater sale. It also found its way to this country, an almost literal translation appearing in “The Boke of Knowledge of Thynges Vnknown….” published in London in 1585.
Wetterbüchlein. Von wahrer Erkenntniss des Wetters.
By Leonhard Reynman. (Berlin: A. Asher & Co., 1893.)
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wetterbüchlein Von wahrer Erkenntniss des Wetters. Nature 48, 389 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/048389a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/048389a0