siderations; as to whether they consisted principally of tillage or of pasture. The forecasts are issued for each of these, and are tested by any reports of weather we can afterwards collect from the district.

No office in existence dares to issue forecasts for any particular place. If we were to forecast rain for London, and a shower were to fall at Windsor, we could not claim it as a fulfilment. It is really recognised as impossible for any office to stand local testing, but when we test the forecasts by the average weather experienced over a large district, the figures come out fairly well, as we shall proceed to show.

The forecasts which appear in the daily papers are prepared at about eight p.m. every evening, from report of observations taken at six p.m., and supplied gratuitously to any newspaper which will send to the office to fetch it. For some years these forecasts, and the telegraphing of the observations on which they were based, were paid for by the Times, in which paper alone the forecasts appeared. Questions were asked in Parliament, and finally the Government agreed to make an extra grant to the office to meet the extra cost of evening telegrams, on condition that the information thence derived was obtainable free of charge, except for postage or porterage, by all newspapers. The following table shows the results of these forecasts for the entire period of thirteen years.

RESULTS OF FORECASTS PREPARED AT EIGHT P.M., 1879-1891.

It will be seen that the highest figure, for the first two columns taken together, falls to England (South), with 85 per cent., counting

entire and partial success together. The least successful districts are, in order of their figures, the West of Scotland, the South of Ireland, and then the North of Ireland and the North-west of England, ranking equally. The least successful forecasts are therefore our exposed west and north-west coasts.

These figures are our own estimates of our own work, and are therefore open to criticism, and to possible cavil, but we possess other and independent estimates from persons who may fairly be considered as representing the general public.

For the last fourteen summers we have issued at four p.m., during the hay-making season, forecasts for the use of farmers in judging of the weather for the next day. The recipients have been nominated respectively, in England by the Royal Agricultural Society; in Ireland by the Royal Dublin Society; and in Scotland by the Highland Society. The information on which the hay-harvest results are based is obtained from persons who specially undertake to check the forecasts day by day, the results affording strong confirmation of the figures in the table given above.

ROBERT H. SCOTT.

EUROPEAN CULTURE AND ASIATIC CRITICISM.

N°

OTHING is more characteristic of the icy indifference, indeed the aversion and loathing inspired in the Eastern world by the appearance of the first rays of Western culture, than the absolute want of curiosity or desire for any more intimate knowledge of Europe. For centuries the idea of mankind in the West had filled the Oriental mind only with amazement and fear; and yet only recently and very occasionally has the Eastern been able to trace this enigmatic stranger to his own home, to observe his habits and customs closely and at their source, and to see for himself the causes of the intellectual and material superiority of the West. That Europe in the darkness of the Middle Ages possessed little attraction for the Asiatic, with his thirst for knowledge and enterprise in trade, is easily understood. To men living in the capital of the Caliphs, in India, or in China, a sojourn in that land of darkness, except in the interests of geography or ethnography, appeared as dangerous and as useless as a journey to Timbuctoo in the eyes of an European of the last century. But it is highly characteristic of the Asiatic and his criticism upon our Western civilisation that this indifference continues with a certain class even in the present time.

Such journeys in Europe as were undertaken by Asiatics in the past were chiefly confined to diplomatic missions incident to political intercourse-a sort of enforced visit, so eminently distasteful that diplomatic employment was regarded by Turkish ambassadors in the first decades. of our own century as a loss of royal favour and a banishment. In the accounts of the travels of such diplomatic agents, so far as they are accessible to us, we find, therefore, only slight indications of any lasting impressions made by travel, while of critical observations, to say nothing of comparisons between the culture of the two worlds, only the very faintest traces are perceivable. Naturally, such impressions are first heard of among the Ottomans, from some keen-eyed and clear-headed State officials, who at any rate had seen more than they wrote down, and whose records prove that they must have been very much in advance

of their countrymen, nay, of many Asiatics, of that time. The first of these diplomatic travellers spoken of was Ahmed Resmi Efendi, an ambassador from the Sultan Mustafa III. to the Court of Frederick the Great a man who looked with unprejudiced eyes upon the lands and people of the West; and the account he gives of his journey to Prussia through Galicia and Poland is characterised by singular objectivity and a sufficient amount of intelligence. His descriptions of foreign towns, institutions, habits, and customs are given with unmistakable, though unspoken admiration. He is especially struck by the universal supremacy of law and order; he praises the honesty and integrity of the merchants; and is greatly charmed with the simplicity of Protestantism, so much so that he puts the Lutherans down as disguised Mohammedans. In Frederick the Great he recognises a conqueror of nations comparable to Nadir Shahro Mir Oweïs, and his comment upon this man of rare virtues and magnanimity—“ he has remained free from the bonds of sectarianism and religious superstition "-says a great deal for a Mohammedan of that time. This same Ahmed Resmi Efendi was sent to the Court at Vienna in 1757, to announce the accession of the Sultan Mustafa III. War was then raging between Austria and Prussia, and he expressed the opinion that Prussia must be victorious. "Brandenburg," says the Turkish statesman, " must finally conquer all his enemies, for Ibe Khalidum, in the preface to his work, has made the remark that new empires must in the course of time have the victory over old long-standing ones." A Turkish prophecy of the German Empire exactly a hundred years before its establishment!

Similar expressions occur in the reports of their embassy submitted by Ahmed Azmi Efendi and Seid Wahid Efendi. The first of these, who was sent in 1790 to the Court of Frederick William, inserted in the account of his travels observations which, under the guise of quiet commendation of the society and government of Christian lands, imply criticism of native Oriental conditions. That officials in Prussia are characterised by diligence and rare conscientiousness, that they accept no bribery, that luxury in dress and household goods is discouraged, indeed heavily taxed by the Government of that country-our Turkish observer relates all this, not only as being remarkable, but with a real appreciation of these and other qualities of the Christian world; and his silence regarding the absence of these virtues in Turkey says more than a whole series of eloquent encomiums on Western civilisation. The discourses of Seid Wahid Efendi, too, whom the Sultan Selim III. sent

to Napoleon in 1806, on Poland, Prussia, and Germany from Paris, are full of the praises of the culture of the West, and the flourishing condition of our towns and streets; without having the courage, however, to institute a comparison between the East and the West, which must inevitably have been to the discredit of native conditions, and have wounded the self-esteem of the Faithful, who prided themselves not a little upon their Islamite culture. There were certainly many Turkish ambassadors besides those mentioned who, in their narrative, expressed their opinions clearly upon the different branches of Western culture, and introduced certain novelties. Thus Said Bey, ambassador at the Court of Louis XV., introduced typography, and another who was sent to England in the last century published the first modern Turkish atlas. Even after the introduction of steam-power, the number of Turkish travellers in Europe increased very slightly; and the published reports of those of later times are chiefly concerned with the various institutions by which comfort in life and the order and quiet of communities are secured, without, however, in the least disparaging the customs of the East, much less entering upon comparisons.

Since Ottomans in the immediate neighbourhood of the Occidental world have manifested so slight an interest in the source of Western civilisation, which has caused an extraordinary change, nay, quite a revolution, in their social and political life, it ought not to cause surprise if in more distant Asia a still greater indifference and coldness prevailed. Of the judgment of the Arabs and Persians upon the wonderful country of the Frenghis nothing at all has been heard till quite recently, although Persia, having connections everywhere, had sent ambassadors to Venice as early as the time of Urun Hassan, and Feth Ali Shah was represented at the Parisian Court in 1816 by the Armenian Mir Daud Saturian. Whether Ferrukh Khan, Extraordinary Ambassador in Europe between 1850-60, committed to writing a special account of the wonders of Western civilisation we can only conjecture, for such a piece of writing has never come before us; but the circumstance is all the more remarkable that Nassreddin Shah, in the published accounts of his European travels, written expressly for the instruction of his people, refrains entirely from any criticism of our conditions, as well as from any comparison of the two civilisations. In the Persian king's narrative are described faithfully and exactly the notabilities of our towns, the natural beauties of Europe, personal experiences, and the different impressions made by our armies and literary and scientific institutions,