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SUPPLEMENTARY REPORT ON METEOROLOGY. 51 
calculated and communicated to the Association in two reports 
on the subject*. 4. A most interesting series of observations 
made every two hours in the inhospitable regions of Nova Zem- 
bla, has been published by M. von Baer of St. Petersburgh, to 
whom I am indebted for a copy of his paperst. Some of his 
results we will immediately mention. 5. Dr. Richardson has 
undertaken the most laborious but most useful task of reducing 
into order, and into their mean results, the extensive series 
of two-hourly observations made in various years in the arctic 
regions of America by the expeditions of Parry and Franklin t. 
This has also been partially done by M. von Baer, in the me- 
moirs last-cited, so that we have in some measure a more com- 
plete meteorological knowledge of the climate of these desolate 
regions than we can be said to possess of that of our own coun- 
try. Dr. Richardson has carefully compared his diurnal curves 
with those of Leith and Plymouth, and we find the constancy 
of the interval between the hours of mean temperature§ here 
remarkably reproduced, and also in a remarkable manner, Brew- 
ster’s law of the correspondence of the mean temperature of two 
hours of the same name for the whole year with the mean tem- 
perature of the year||._ The latter fact comes out exceedingly 
well also from the tropical observations of M. Freycinet], and 
from the table of Brandes already referred to**. 
38. All these observations go a long way towards the il- 
lustration of those general laws of climate which may be con- 
sidered in some measure independent of local causes. It is not 
easy perhaps to conceive a more violent contrast of climate than 
the continental one of arctic America, and the insular one of 
Plymouth. It were undoubtedly to be desired, however, that 
these observations were extended to tropical regions; and the 
expeditions recently fitted out to St. Helena, the Cape of Good 
* British Association, Fifth Report, p. 181; Eighth Report, p. 26. 
+ Ueber das Clima von Nowaja-Semlja und die Mittlere Temperatur insbe- 
sondere ; Ueber den Jahrlichen Gang der Temperatur in Nowaja-Semlja. Von 
K. E. v. Baer.—Bulletin de ? Acad. Imp. de St. Pétersbourg, t. ii. No. 19. 
t Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 1839. 
§ See First Report, p. 211. 
|| Richardson, p. 39. From a communication made by Mr. Harris at Bir- 
mingham in 1839, it appears that hourly observations have been made at Phi- 
ladelphia (United States) and in Ceylon ; but the results are not published. 
{| Poisson, Théorie de la Chaleur, p. 465. 
** To these may now be added two sets of hourly observations in Inverness- 
shire, made at the expense of the British Association under the direction of 
Sir D, Brewster. From the communication made by that gentleman to the 
Meeting of the Association in 1840, since this report was written, it appears, 
that in these observations also, the constancy of the interval between the hours 
of mean temperature mentioned in the text, is well preserved. 
EQ? 
