Much has been written about Robert Hooke's so-called ‘Discourse of Earthquakes’, the series of lectures he delivered before the Royal Society of London over the years 1667–1700. The chief points of the lectures are thus well known: fossils (the word is used here in its modern meaning) are the remains of once-living organisms, and their burial in rather odd places within the earth's crust can be explained by the dislocations of land and sea resulting from earthquakes.

Historians of science have shown little interest in meteorology and, in Britain at least, have almost totally ignored the development of meteorological institutions. The Meteorological Office itself has found some mention at times such as its supposed centenary in 1955, but even then the interest has come mainly from meteorologists writing for the delectation of their fellows. This neglect is surprising because the story of the Office contains much to reward the historian. Its very formation as a governmental scientific institution in 1854 supports arguments against the popular concept of mid-nineteenth century Britain as a cauldron of unbridled laissez-faire; the role it adopted in developing practical usages for science brought it into conflict with members of the academic scientific establishment; its later transition from an inaugural period as a department of the Board of Trade to a second phase under the control of a committee appointed by the Royal Society, with consequent changes in the methods of financing and administration, gives useful insights into the contemporary attitudes of government officials towards public expenditure on science; and its first head, Robert FitzRoy, was himself a man of such remarkable interest and complexity as to render the subject worthy of investigation on that count alone.

The Berthollet-Proust controversy and Dalton's atomic theory are two important historical landmarks which appeared almost simultaneously at the very beginning of the nineteenth century. Therefore it is likely that between the theory of definite proportions—one of the main subjects of the controversy–and Dalton's atomic theory there was an important interrelation, and that they reinforced each other. Kapoor has suggested that Proust could not have been the forerunner of Dalton's law of constant and multiple proportions, because Dalton discovered his law from completely different premises, and does not seem to have got his ideas from Proust. In my opinion, however, his conclusion does not seem to be decisive.