148 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1905 
mainstay of the forecaster. When I say the barometer, I 
do not so much mean any single one, and that without a 
continuous record, as is too generally used by individual 
observers. 
The indications of a barometer, which are confined 
to the varying pressures of the atmospheric covering 
of the earth, only attain their true value when simultaneous 
observations over a large area (synoptic readings) can be 
collected and plotted on a map, and this is the grand 
advance which comparatively recent years (the last thirty 
years) have seen inaugurated, and which, of course, has 
only become available by the use of the telegraphic wire. 
I would here enter an apology for reference to very 
elementary knowledge, and a disclaimer of original re- 
search, my notes, which are mainly suggestive of a closer 
study of the subject, being compiled from the works 
of Abercrombie, Scott, Reclus and other standard works, 
and papers read before the Meteorological Society. 
I will assume it to be possible that rather hazy ideas are 
prevalent among many who have not given much attention 
to the subject, and that a few elementary observations may 
not be wholly out of place. 
I remember, whilst looking at a daily chart in the 
passage of the Gloucester Club, (by the way, a very 
unsuitable, though rather common position for such 
charts, which cannot so be properly studied) being once 
asked by a passing member, an ex-mayor and magistrate : 
“ Understandest thou what thou readest?” My answer 
was: ‘‘Oh yes, more or less.” The word less hardly ex- 
pressed his ideas on the subject: “still less” would have 
been near the mark. 
It is important to get a clear idea of what a barometer 
can show us, and what it does not show: a subject on 
which some confusion is rather common. 
