241 
That Dr. Tunstall’s judgment with regard to its humidity is not 
correct will be made to appear presently. In fact the amount of 
rain at any place and the humidity of the air are two quite 
distinct elements of climate. In that part of Cambridgeshire 
bordering upon the fen districts where I formerly lived, I can 
state from long observation that the air is more or less damp during 
a great part of the year in consequence of a clay soil that retains. 
the wet, though the rain-fall there is less than almost anywhere 
else in England. I might appeal to others also on this head. 
Thus Dr. Burder remarks “that an increase of moisture in the air 
does not involve an increased fall of rain ;’ and that “a large 
monthly fall of rain is consistent with a dry mean state of the 
atmosphere, and vice versa.”* Mr. Lowe also, in his “ Climate of 
Nottingham,” remarks that in the year 1852, “the mean degree of 
hursidity was slightly less than the average,” though the amount 
of rain fallen was 9} inches more than the average.t 
Let us now look more closely into the question of the humidity 
of Bath, and see what light is thrown upon it by the observations 
in the gardens of the Literary Institution as recorded in its daily 
registers, 
The following Table gives in four columns (1) the mean 
temperature of the dew-point, (2) the mean depression of the dew- 
point below the temperature of the air, (3) the mean elastic force 
of vapour, and (4) the mean degree of humidity, for each month, 
deduced from the observations of nine years, 1866-1874. 
ES ere oy a ee ae 
- * Meteorology of Clifton, 1863. 
+ Climate of Nottingham, p. 50, 
