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IN the Introduction to this work, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland tells us that it was undertaken at the request of Government, the application being to deduce from the observations taken under the auspices of the Scottish Meteorological Society, “certain monthly and general results for each and all of the stations, results supposed to be important for medical climatology and its influence on population and national welfare.” The ways of statisticians are mysterious; it is difficult to understand what advantage either to medical climatology, to agriculture, or, broadly, to national welfare, is to be derived from the means here printed, means not only of barometric pressure, but of temperature, rain, and hours of sunshine, including as they do the observations at some 55 stations scattered over all Scotland, from the Shetland Islands to Dumfries, from Aberdeen to Islay—places with peculiarities of climate as distinct as could anywhere be found within anything like equal distances. We suppose, however, that there is a use for them; and, that being the case, they could not be put before the reader with more beautiful simplicity and clearness than we here find; but as we reflect on the enormous amount of skilled labour which the reductions must have cost, we cannot help regretting that meteorology can derive no advantage from it. With this report for “the purposes of the Registrar-General” is sewn up one of a very different and highly interesting character, the detailed observations of the storm which passed over the North of Scotland on October 3, 1860. These observations describe very fully a storm of extraordinary intensity, bursting almost with the suddenness of a meteor on the northern coasts; with such suddenness, indeed, that at several of the stations where the barometer was registered only at intervals of twelve hours, the whole fall, amounting, it would seem, to about 1·8in., and the subsequent rise, passed quite unnoticed. One point which has been often, though not very closely, observed in tropical cyclones, comes out most distinctly—the remarkable rise of the barometer beyond the limits of the storm, before and after it, in Scotland, in England, and France, about the time of its meridian passage. The lowest barometric reading anywhere observed was 28·5; this leads us to remark that, in tabulating the conclusions, the force of the wind has been unintentionally much exaggerated, owing, it appears to us, to a confusion common to all non-nautical minds between the land scale, which numbers from 0 to 6, and the Beaufort, or sea scale, which numbers from 0 to 12; for the one is not to be converted into the other by simply doubling; and the shore 6, far from being the equivalent of the Beaufort 12, is more nearly represented by 9 to 10, or at the outside by 10, which may be considered as corresponding to a velocity of about 80 miles an hour. In the discussion of the observations of this storm, many points of great interest arise: amongst others, the relationship between wind and pressure, the howling of the wind, and the ascensional motion of the air near the centre. The curt, able, cautious, and suggestive treatment of these is such as we might expect from the high standing of Prof. Smyth, and leaves little to be wished for except time for meditation.Scottish Meteorology, from 1856 to 1871.Being a continued monthly and annual representation of the more important mean results for the whole country, deduced at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, from the schedules of observation by the Observers of the Scottish Meteorological Society, for the purposes of the Registrar-General of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Scotland. (Edinburgh Astronomical Observations, vol.xiii.)