Toaldo, Joseph

, a learned Italian meteorologist, was born in 1719, at Pianez^a, in Vincenza, and educated at Padua, where he took a degree as doctor of theology, but was principally attached to mathematical studies. He obtained in the mean time some ecclesiastical preferment, and in 1762 was appointed professor of astronomy and meteorology in the university of Padua, where his talents were well known. Here he procured an observatory to be built, which was completed in 1774, and furnished with some instruments from England. About three years after, he was elected an honorary member of our royal society, and had contributed some articles to the Philosophical Transactions. He was first known throughout Europe by an ingenious work on the influence of the heavenly bodies on the weather and atmosphere, “Delia vera Influenza,” &c. 1770, 4to, and became afterwards yet more known by his “Meteorological Journal,” which he began in 1773, and continued till his death. His reputation was afterwards extended by a variety of publications, separate, or in the literary Journals, on meteorological subjects, of which Fabroni has given a large list. He died in Nov. 1797, in the seventy-ninth year of his age, and his private character is said to have been no less estimable than his public. ²