Classification of Clouds

Abstract

As one who has been engaged for nearly forty years in working up the materials for a monograph on clouds, I suppose I deserve the name of a “specialist in clouds” as much as any one. Yet I decline, for reasons which I will hereafter state in an appendix to my volume, to be altogether bound by the outlines of classification which my friends Prof. Hildebrandsson and the Hon. Ralph Abercromby appear to lay down (NATURE, December 8, p. 129 et seq.), although they adopt several of the names which come from my mint. I fully adopt the opinion implicitly held by Mr. Abercromby, and stated by my friend Captain Barker (ibid.)—from whose classification, however, I differ in one important point—that all ordinarily careful observers will readily comprehend the broad and simple distinctions expressed in any fairly good classification. Nevertheless, I believe that the apparently slow progress of this branch of research, and the tediousness of the work thrown upon the classifier, are matters on which we should congratulate ourselves, since every year adds something to our knowledge of those physical and structural processes which form the basis of all true classification; and I trust that some years may pass before an International Congress may attempt finally to set its seal upon any nomenclature or classification of clouds.