generalization.

Very different is the position of an infant science like
Meteorology. The unity of the whole ... is not always kept in view,
even as far as our present very limited general conceptions will
admit of: and as few persons have devoted their whole attention to
this science alone ... no wonder that we find strewed over its
irregular and far-spread surface, patches of cultivation upon spots
chosen without discrimination and treated on no common principle,
which defy the improver to inclose, and the surveyor to estimate
and connect them. Meteorological instruments have been for the most
part treated like toys, and much time and labor have been lost in
making and recording observations utterly useless for any
scientific purpose. Even the numerous registers of a rather
superior class ... hardly contain one jot of information ready for
incorporation in a Report on the progress of Meteorology....

The most general mistake probably consists in the idea that
Meteorology, as a science, has no other object but an experimental
acquaintance with the condition of those variable elements which
from day to day constitute the general and vague result of the
state of the _weather_ at any given spot; not considering that ...
when grouped together with others of the same character, [they] may
afford the most valuable aid to scientific generalization.[5]

Forbes goes on to call for a greater emphasis on theory, and the
replacement of the many small-scale observatories with "a few great
Registers" to be adequately maintained by "great Societies" or by the
government. He suggests that the time for pursuit of theory might be
gained from "the vague mechanical task to which at present they
generally devote their time, namely the search for great numerical
accuracy, to a superfluity of decimal places exceeding the compass of
the instrument to verify."

From its founding the British Association sponsored systematic
observation at various places. In 1842 it initiated observations at the
Kew Observatory, which has continued until today to be the premier
meteorological observatory in the British Empire. The American scientist
Joseph Henry observed the functioning of an observatory maintained by
the British Association at Plymouth in 1837, and when he became
Secretary of the new Smithsonian Institution a few years later he made