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Then came another important scientific clergyman, theBelgian Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest, who arrived in Peking in1660, shortly before the accession of the second Emperor ofthe Ch'ing dynasty, K'ang-hsi (1662-1722).Verbiest became a companion and confidant to the youngEmperor. He refitted the observatory on Peking's easternwall, superintending the reconstruction of instrumentsoriginally placed there during the Yuan period, including asextant, quadrant and celestial globe. He also introduced thethermometer.Verbiest's arrival coincided with the period of greatscientific advancement in Europe, where some of the firstknown observations about the weather had appeared in the4th century BC, when Aristotle wrote his Meteorologica.By the early 14th century, the earliest known systematicrecording of local weather was performed in England, whenWilliam Merle, Rector of Driby, kept daily records forseven years 1337-1344.The opening of the world's great sea routes, leading to theexploration of countries such as China, created a demand formore and better meteorological information.The first primitive network of observation stations isbelieved to have been established by Ferdinand II of Tuscanyin 1653. His Academy of Experimentation established sevenmeteorological stations in northern Italy and four outside thecountry.The development in Europe at this time of instruments tomeasure physical phenomena greatly assisted the foundationof meteorology as a science. The thermometer had beendeveloped around 1600 and the raingauge in 1639 (althoughmethods of measuring rainfall had been used much earlier inChina, India and Korea). The barometer followed in the1640s, along with the hygrometer to measure humidity andthe anemometer to measure wind speed.In 1780 the Meteorological Society of Mannheim wasformed and established 39 weather observation stations, 14of them in Germany and the rest in other countries.13