HONGKONG.
REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE OBSERVATORY FOR 1888.
Presented to the Legislative Council, by Command of His Excellency the Governor.
131
No.
6
HONGKONG OBSERVATORY,
8th February, 1889.
89.
SIR,-For the information of His Excellency the Governor I have the honour to forward my Annual Report for 1888.
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3. A report containing exhaustive investigations of the typhoons of 1886 and 1887 with five plates representing their paths has been printed. Father FAURA was good enough to send me the paths of typhoons in the Philippine Islands in 1887, which were used for that district and the Tokio weather-maps were used for the Japanese Archipelago. This reduced the amount of work that fell to my share, but the typhoons in the Pacific Ocean had to be investigated here as sufficient information does not appear to have been available at the other observatories.
4. Information concerning the typhoons of 1888 has been collected and the observations are being reduced and tabulated. In addition to the observations furnished by stations on shore, the logs of 139 different vessels containing entries on 1712 days (counting those made on board different ships on same date separately) are available. A number of log-books have of course been looked through without entries bearing on typhoons having been found. The final investigation of the typhoons of 1888 will probably be ready next year. It should be remembered that although the typhoons are exhaustively investigated here, that does not imply the complete elaboration of all that might be done by aid of the meteorological data at my disposal. An immense quantity of information bearing on the meteorology of China is collected here, that is not utilized for lack of clerks to take it in hand, and this cannot fail to affect the results of researches on typhoons for there are certain questions con- nected with this subject that cannot be answered in the absence of a complete discussion of the climate of China.
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7. That this requirement is fully recognised everywhere else in the Empire and properly provided for may be seen e.g. from the following extract from the Report on the Administration of the Meteoro- logical Department of the Government of India in 1887-88 (Page 16 §7). "In order to facilitate and expedite the working of these arrangements, the Telegraph Department has granted the privilege of Precedence urgency to telegrams referring to stormy weather and the hoisting of storm-signals between the Meteorological Reporter of Calcutta and the Port Officers and Meteorological Superintendents of Cocanada, Gopalpur, Madras, Masulipatam, Negapatam and Vizagapatam. The names of other officers will be added to this list as found necessary for the proper working of the system. Instructions for the preparation and dispatch of the telegrams in proper form, in order to secure priority of transmission to ordinary urgent messages, will be sent by the India Meteorological Office to the various officers permitted to send them."
8. My pamphlet on the Law of Storms in the Eastern Seas as well as my reports on typhoons have been widely utilized by scientific and nautical authorities over the world. The former has been repeatedly reprinted and translated into foreign languages e.g. together with the Instructions for making Meteorological Observations, etc. by order of the Inspector General of the Imperial Chinese Maritime Customs, for the use of residents in China. Writers very rarely make use of such reports without due reference to the Observatory from which they emanated, but in a paper in the Annalen der Hydrographie (Berlin, 1887 XV page 333) the substance of my pamphlet has been republished and even paths of typhoons, which were constructed at the expense of the Colonial Government, have been reproduced