SESsroiJ 1895-96. xlii 



chronological ordor all the notes on eartliquakes, storms, frosts, 

 floods, etc., Avhieli could be collected, ranch p;ood would be done. 

 Of coiu'se this could be done for unpublished as well as for 

 published records. 



(). Jiecords of river and toell levels. — The second half of this 

 subject had so often been brought before them by Mr. De Ranee, 

 the Secretary of the Committee on Underground Waters, that he 

 need merely mention it.* The first part referred to a subject in- 

 volved in his next and last heading. 



7. Records of foods and the placing of food-marls. — It was very 

 strange that we were so nearly the worst nation in Europe for 

 looking after our rivers. He did not refer to fouling by sewage 

 and by manufacturing refuse, or to defective engineering, but to 

 records of river-levels, to scale-marks on the bridges, to automatic 

 recorders of their rise and fall, to arrangements for warning the 

 owners of low-lying property when floods are probable, and to the 

 classification, levelling, and publication in full, of particulars as to 

 old flood-level marks, and the due marking of new ones when 

 floods occur. He did not suggest that their societies should them- 

 selves do all this, but that they should bring the matter before 

 theii- Parish and County Councils, and couple their request with 

 the off'er of any assistance in their power. Of course the suggestion 

 would be received politely, the great cost would be urged, and in 

 many cases nothing would be done. Years ago he suggested such 

 arrangements to an influential man in York, but nothing was done. 

 In 1892 York had a flood, not so bad as some on record, but one 

 which cost the Corporation a very large sum ; they paid it, and 

 that steed having been stolen they figuratively locked the stable 

 door by adopting all the arrangements suggested above. If the 

 Councils did not take their ad\-ice, they must remember that the 

 correspondence would be on their minutes, to be referred to when 

 theii' town or district suffered as York did. 



Captain G. H. Elwes laid upon the table a paper on the rainfall 

 in Dorsetshire, compiled by Mr. H. S. Eaton, a member of the 

 Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, from records 

 kept in the county for the last forty years. It was illustrated by 

 maps and diagrams, one of the maps showing the rainfall, the other 

 the elevation of the land. The Chairman said that Mr. Eaton's 

 work was an admirable example of the way in which the rainfall 

 of a county should be worked out, a labour requiring much patience 

 and perseverance. Ho wished they could have such memoirs for 

 every county. Your Delegate stated that about twenty years ago 

 he began to record the rainfall of Hertfordshii-e with about twenty 

 observers, and he had since done his best to add to their number, 

 with the result that there were now about forty. He had obtained 

 about thirty daily records, which were worked up and analyzed but 

 not published in detail. In the ' Transactions of the Hertfordshire 

 Natural History Society' much space was devoted to meteorological 

 work and to phenology, and he hoped that the Societies in other 



