Abstract
SIX years ago we remarked (NATURE, vol. ix. p. 164) that what was required in order to describe and classify many forms of clouds, were accurate delineations of these forms in their different aspects, and systematic inquiries as to the relations of clouds to the mode of their formation, to the states of the aqueous Vapour composing them, and to the varying elasticity, temperature, and electricity of the atmosphere. Since then but slow progress has been made, the great desideratum being the contribution of data in a form on which science can lay its hands. A contribution of data of this sort has just been made by Dr. Hildebrandsson, the director of the meteorological observatory of Upsala, in a memoir on the “Classification of Clouds employed at the Observatory,” illustrated with sixteen photographs of clouds. The photographs, which are about nine by seven inches, are very fine ones, and well chosen out of a large number taken under the direction of Dr. Hildebrandsson, to illustrate the different forms of cloud and their more important modifications and transitional states. The series representing the more marked changes from the delicately-pencilled cirri of the flimsiest texture to the nimbus of a rain-cloud is a most instructive one; as is also the series showing the strato-cumulus as commonly observed during the winter season in Scandinavia. The relations of the varying forms of clouds to cyclones and anticyclones which pass over Sweden is just touched on, but this important phase of the inquiry we hope Dr. Hildebrandsson will again return to, seeing he can so readily refer to the observations of his observatory, which give so complete and satisfactory a record of the various fugitive phenomena of the weather changes of that part of Sweden. Dr. Hildebrandsson's photographs of clouds may be studied with equal interest and professional advantage by artists as well as by meteorologists, it being scarcely possible to point to any department of art standing more in need of a thorough reformation than the cloudscapes of our landscape painters.
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Meteorological Notes . Nature 21, 265 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021265a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021265a0