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that year as incomplete, and taking 1866 as the first year, we havea 
series of seventeen years, the averages of which admit of comparison 
with those of the present and last year, as regards the three 
winter months of December, January, and February. I will first 
consider the rainfall. The total rainfall for the three winter 
months just completed amounts to 10°804 inches, being 2:110 
inches above the average. This in itself has been exceeded in 
two previous winters ; viz., in the winter of 1876-7, when the 
fall amounted to 12:350 inches; and in the winter of 1868-9, 
when it amounted to 13-388 inches. The excessive wet of the 
winter we have just completed drew the public attention more 
especially from the circumstance of its occurring at the end of a year 
remarkable for its persistent rainfall during the last nine months 
of it with the exceptions of May and September. The rainfall 
for April, June, July, August, October, Novémber and December, 
was in each of these months considerably above the average ; 
and in June and July more than double the average. The total 
for the year amounted to 42°294 inches, being not merely the 
largest quantity registered in any one year since the commence- 
ment of the Institution Registers, but nearly ten inches above 
the average of 17 years. The nearest approaches to it were the 
rainfalls of 1872, 1875, and 1878, in all which years the fall was 
more than 37 inches and a half. 
Dr. Burder, the well-known observer at Clifton, has published, 
a statement of the rainfall there, which during the past year 
1882, is said to have amounted to 44-047 inches, exceeding the 
Bath rainfall by 1:753 inches. I have in former instances 
noticed that the Clifton rainfall, as occasionally reported in the 
papers, exceeds that of Bath, but I am unable to assign the exact 
reason, the two places not being so very far apart, unless it be 
due to a difference of elevation. 
I now pass to the question of temperature as regards the late 
winter. The mean temperature of the last three months, 
December, January, and February, was 43°°6, being 2°-4 above 
