Proceedings. xlix 
It may be satisfactory to know that we are to the front. The 
division (the same as that of the Registrar-General) in which 
Surrey is placed has the greatest frequency (58°4), with the 
greatest number of summer thunderstorms (43°7), and the 
second greatest number of winter storms (14:7). 
C. Harpive. The Cold Period at the beginning of March.* 
On the 4th ‘‘the greatest area of cold was situated over Kent 
and Surrey”; the minimum temperature recorded in Surrey 
being 5:4° at Beddington. 
A short abstract of a paper on the possibility of forecasting 
weather by means of monthly averages is based on ‘‘ averages 
for monthly mean temperature and rainfall for Croydon for 25 
years,’’ and the ‘‘ forecasts have been published in the two best 
local papers,’ with satisfaction to the author. 
Capt. J. P. Macnear. On the Action of Lightning during 
the Thunderstorms of June 6th and 7th, 1889, at Cranleigh.+ 
He tried to find out the cause of selection of particular trees, 
&c. On June 6th, the objects noted were mostly ‘‘in a line 
North-west and South-east, three miles in length,’’ and the 
like was found to be the case on June 7th. The storm passed 
N.W. with a §.K. wind. 
The oak was the most frequently struck tree; he thinks, not 
because they were more common, but because ‘the ronglmess 
of the bark causes gaps of its continuity as a conductor.” Other 
trees were struck, ‘‘but it is said that the beech is never struck.”’ 
There are two kinds of injury to trees, the most common a 
score out of the bark of the trunk, out along a limb, and then to 
the outer twigs. ‘In these cases I imagine that the rain is 
falling, and streams of water are running down the sides of the 
tree, forming a conductor which becomes insufficient, at the time 
of discharge, to carry off all the electricity, and therefore becomes 
so suddenly converted into steam as to blow out the bark.” 
** The other form is the shattering of the tree, which I imagine 
to occur when the electricity is insufficiently carried ‘off by the 
outer surface.” 
He concludes ‘‘that the causes of selection of objects struck 
appear too slight to be readily perceptible, or to enable one to 
say beforehand that such and such an object will probably be 
struck,’’ and he asks observers to note the surrounding conditions 
of objects that are struck. 
W. H. Tynpatt gave a Report on the Meteorology of Redhill 
for 1887 and for 1888.} 
T. P. Newman, in a paper on Fog, instanced the railway- 
* Quart. Journ. Meteor. Soc., vol. xvi, p. 152. 
+ Ibid., pp. 229-232. 
} Proc. Holmesdale Nat. Hist. Club for 1888-9, published 1890, pp. 1-5, 
37-40. , 
