Excerpt from The Study of the Weather
Every schoolboy has an interest in knowing whether the ground will be too soft for cricket or too hard for football, whether the rain will be good for fishing or the frost hard enough for skating. We cannot control the weather. It is little use altering the screw of the barometer or holding a hot poker near the thermometer in hopes of making things favourable for a particular game or excursion. But by understanding the weather we may hope to make the best of it and to take advantage of summer sunshine in hay-making, of thunderstorms for filling cisterns, and of winter frost for mellowing soil.
The pages that follow will show that no complete understanding of the weather can be obtained on a playground or even on a parish basis. Local worthies may be weatherwise or otherwise. Among the hills they often understand the cloud caps better than a stranger. But modern meteorology has become a world science which knows no boundaries, not even the aurora borealis on the North or the setting sun on the West. The British Empire is too small for it. Its future needs some worldwide basis of international cooperation.
Perhaps the most enduring of recent victories will prove to be the conquest of the air. This has not been achieved by reckless bravery alone, but also by skill and knowledge. We have known for years that our scholars wished to fly and that our blackboard mechanics of chalk and talk fell far short of the thrills and excitements of a trip high in air.
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