Xll PROCEEDINGS, 



inexpensive. Easy, because it merely involves a walk to a bridge, 

 a jetty, or a pier-bead, the loweiing of the thermometer into the 

 water, entering the reading, and carrying it home again ; healthy, 

 from the regularity of the walk ; and inexpensive, because the 

 verified K.O. thermometer and its copper case, cord, and every- 

 thing, could be sent to any part of the country complete for 

 a sovereign. 



3. Earth temperature at shallow and at great deptlis. — The second 

 half of this subject had often been brought before the delegates, 

 the Underground Temperature Committee being the oldest one of 

 the British Association. It deals chiefly with the temperature in 

 mines and in deep shafts and wells. Anyone who could obtain 

 good records at depths of, or exceeding, 1,000 feet, could do useful 

 work, but he was doubtful whether much more could be learned in 

 this country by observations at depths between 10 feet and 1,000 feet 

 than we already know. Observations at shallow depths — say 

 3 inches to 10 feet — were becoming less rare than formerly, and 

 the time was not distant when the law of temperature-variation 

 for shallow depths would be known with sufficient accuracy. That 

 much had yet to be ascertained, many persons learned by burst 

 waterpipes last winter. He mentioned this as an illustration of 

 the application of scientific records to the welfare of mankind, not 

 as an indication that he considered the mischief to have been 

 wholly produced by soil-temperature. 



4. Phenological tvorJc. — He scarcely need tell them that the word 

 phenology means the laws of the life-history of plants and animals ; 

 in fact, an endeavour to record the progress of the seasons, not by 

 thermometers or by rain-gauges, but by plants, insects, and birds, 

 and the study of the relations between the indications of the 

 natural-history phenomena and those of the instruments, and 

 efforts to separate cause and effect. It had always seemed to 

 him to be a class of work peculiarly adapted for the local scientific 

 societies. The Royal Meteorological Society had spent a con- 

 siderable sum in promoting this work, and in the hands of Mr. E. 

 Mawley it was progressing. He was not competent to pronounce 

 any criticism upon the work beyond this, that Mr. Mawley had 

 devoted himself to it, and had produced tables and diagrams of 

 great interest. He thought that the naturalists should either co- 

 operate heartily with the meteorologists, or else should show that 

 the meteorologists are attempting the impossible or the undesirable. 



5. Early meteorological records. — It was a prevalent idea 

 (especially with executors) that old manuscript books of observa- 

 tions are useless. Addressing the delegates as representatives of 

 large local bodies, many of them with museums and libraries, he 

 in\'ited them to see to it that any such records that they had were 

 properly cared for. 



Another suggestion — the practice was fortunately rapidly 

 spreading of publishing the eaiiy parochial registers. If each 

 society represented would make it a rule to go through all such 

 publications as have been issued within its area, and print in 



