ENT RODUCTION. 
fat, COUNTY RAINFALL. 
HUGE ~ROBERT. MILL,. D.Sc., 
Director of the British Rainfall Organization. 
JHE rainfall of a district possessed of such varied configuration 
as Derbyshire cannot be easily ascertained, as every valley 
and every spur of the higher ground presents a different slope 
and aspect to the rain-bringing wind, and so secures a different 
amount of precipitation of moisture. On this account records 
of rainfall, no matter how scrupulously they are kept, may, 
unless they are very numerous and carefully considered, give a 
misleading idea as to the total amount of rain which falls upon 
the County in the course of a year. It is necessary to con- 
sider not only the few very long records which exist in order 
to ascertain the true average rainfall at certain places, but also 
to examine all records, long or short, in order to find how, in 
any particular year, the amount of rainfall varies from place to 
place. Such a method of discussion would be impossible were 
it not for the fact that nearly all the observers of rainfall in 
the British Isles co-operate together so as to make their work 
available for the benefit of the community. From 1860 to 
1899 the late Mr. J. G. Symons, F.R.S., collected and published 
the work ‘of the observers in his forty annual volumes of 
British Rainfall, and his old colleague, Mr. Sowerby Wallis, 
and I have continued to preserve the records, and to encourage 
amateur meteorologists to extend them. I look on it as a duty 
and a privilege to maintain the tradition of my predecessors, 
and to make these records as widely useful as possible. 
