386 Ceylon Literary Society. 
sensible effect on the plumb line of the instrument. Added to 
which, the whole plain, in which the measurement was effected, 
was also unfit for such a purpose, except with instruments which 
have been employed at much later periods. From these and 
other causes Capt. Everest thinks that this celebrated measure- 
ment ought not be considered (without a more recent corrobo- 
ration) as sufficient evidence of an inequality in the two hemi- 
spheres of our globe. We have no doubt this subject will en- 
gage the attention of our astronomer at the new observatory in 
that country. 
Some new instruments, of a peculiar mechanism, were exhi- 
bited to the members present. 
The next meeting of the Society (which will be the last of the 
present sessions) will take place on Friday, June 14, at 8 o’clock 
in the evening. \ 
{In our last account of the proceedings of this Society, we re- 
marked that Sir ‘Thomas Brisbane had observed, at sea, an oc- 
cultation of Mercury by the Moon. We apprehend this must 
have been a mistake in the paper transmitted to the Society, as 
Mercury was not (at the period alluded to) in such a situation 
as to adinit of his being occulted, It was probably Regulus 
that was occulted: and that the transcriber had inadvertently 
written the name of the planet, instead of the star. ] 
CEYLON LITERARY SOCIETY. 
At the ‘monthly meeting of this Society, which was held on 
the 17th of September 1821, His Excellency the Lieutenant Go- 
vernor in the chair, the following paper by Lieut. Col. Wright 
was read: 
Observations on the Barometer as applicable to the Island 
of Ceylon. 
The seale of variation in the Barometer being of a very limited 
nature between the tropics, compared with that of latitudes at a 
greater distance from the equator, makes that valuable instru- 
ment, in general, be considered, especially by superficial ob- 
servers, as of little service in the former case; yet there is no 
doubt but by an attentive and careful observation it may be made 
subservient to many useful purposes, and become in the hands 
of the agriculturist and navigator an equally valuable instrument 
even in low latitudes. It is only necessary to know its scale and 
its language. A sudden fall of two or three tenths of an inch 
of the mercury in the tube is probably the prognostic of as great 
a change in the atmosphere as the fall of as many inches in some 
other parts of the world; and as the observation is as readily 
made in one case as the other, it becomes of importance to be 
noted. 
. The 
