METEOROLOGY IO7 



the tropics. Debundja now lies in British mandated territory and 

 an official recording station was established there after the war. 

 The official record for 191 9 is still greater — 577! inches. 



In Nigeria (with part of the Gameroons) the official service is 

 organized by the Surveyor-general. Since 1935, when the Im- 

 perial Airways extension to Kano was opened, two members of 

 the survey department have been seconded entirely for meteoro- 

 logy, and other observers have been trained to take charge of the 

 six major stations which are planned for the use of aircraft. In 

 addition to these there are some sixty-five stations distributed 

 throughout the country, but most of them are poorly equipped 

 and can supply data on only a few of the meteorological elements. 

 Where survey offices exist, the data are collected by the survey staff, 

 but for the most part the observations are in charge of district 

 officers and medical officers, and may be left to African subordi- 

 nates. Hence many of the observations are not reliable, though 

 improvement has been effected in recent years by extensive corres- 

 pondence regarding discrepancies in the data submitted. British 

 West Africa as a whole is one of the few quarters of the habitable 

 globe where data on pressure systems are not available, but this 

 state of affairs will be remedied in Nigeria by the new principal 

 stations. Comparatively few of the existing stations are situated in 

 the dry parts of the Northern Provinces, where data on rainfall 

 are important in connection with agriculture, forestry, etc. 



Concerning publications. Brooks (1920a and 1920b) has written 

 two papers on the distribution of temperature and the distribution 

 of relative humidity. There is a great difference between the 

 Southern Provinces which have in places a very heavy rainfall, 

 and the Northern which are under Saharan influences, particularly 

 during the season of the dry harmattan wind from the north-east. 

 H. N. Thompson (1928), when Director of Forests, reported on 

 the irregularities of rainfall in Nigeria over a period of twenty 

 years. The object was to ascertain the extent of association, if any, 

 between the irregularity of rainfall and the alleged desiccation, 

 especially in the regions bordering the Sahara. No definite con- 

 clusions could be reached, except regarding the best ways of 

 ensuring future water-supplies by preserving natural vegetation, 

 especially along streams and water-divides (see Chapter VII). 



