376 



put themselves in cummuQication with Mr. Symcns, who will give 

 them full directions as to the right sort of gauge and the proper 

 method of fixing it.* 



But there is another way in which we may help Mr. Symons. 

 He is not only desirous of having new gauges fixed in certain 

 localities, but he wants to get all the information he can respecting 

 old registers of rainfall kept formerly, though perhaps long since 

 discontinued, wherever such exist. These would help him to 

 determine, by comparison with those of the present day, whether 

 the average rainfall in this country is the same now or not as in 

 the days of the last generation. There are some registers indeed 

 which go back much earlier, which would allow us to compare the 

 rainfall of the latter half of the last century with that of the first 

 half of the present one if they could be hunted up. I think the 

 Club might do something in this way, if its members in their 

 excursions and weekly walks would only take the trouble to inquire 

 of the clergy or other intelligent persons in the towns and villages 

 they come to whether they know of any parties who formerly 

 measured the rain in their respective neighbourhoods, and where 

 the registers are likely to be found now if the parties are dead or 

 gone elsewhere. Other Naturalists' Clubs have assisted Mr. 

 Symons in his rainfall investigations, t and why should not ours 

 assist him? I put this question with the greater earnestness, 

 feeling that our good name with those among whom we move, if 

 not the very existence of the Club, depends upon our activity and 

 usefulness in the walks of science. 



For these are days, gentlemen, in which all public institutions — 

 even private enterprises when taken in hand for the public good — 

 are watched with extreme jealousy and closely scrutinized in 

 respect of what they do and what they leave undone. No office of 

 trust or power having privilege and opportunity attached to it is 

 allowed to be held by those who are not duly qualified, and who are 

 not prepared to give an account of their proceedings when called 

 upon to do so. Nor is this confined to offices in the civil depart- 

 ment, to charitable institutions, or those for the promotion of 



* Met. Mag. vol. vi., pp. 189-190. 



t See "British RainfaU," 1870, pp. 66, 67. 



