12 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



in Perseus and a second Nova of 4th or 5th magnitude in 

 Gemini near to the one which was discovered in that con- 

 stellation in 1903. Good photographs of the spectrum of the 

 latest Nova Geminorum have been quite lately taken and 

 shew it to be very like that of Nova Persei in 1901. 



METEOROLOGY. 



It would appear that the remarkable summer of 1911 

 has given meteorologists so much to write and think about 

 that there is not very much else of interest in this depart- 

 ment of science to lay before you. Taking the year 1911 

 as a whole, the mean temperature was above the average 

 over all the United Kingdom, and exceeded it by about 

 2 in most English districts. A maximum temperature of 

 100, the highest ever recorded in Great Britain, was regis- 

 tered at Greenwich on August 9th, and more than 90 in 

 most parts of England. The rainfall was deficient, but was 

 brought up to a great extent by the records of the last three 

 months of the year. The duration of bright sunshine was 

 excessive, the greatest excess being 336 hours in the S.E. 

 of England, which may perhaps be better appreciated by 

 saying that there were 28 whole days of 12 hours each of 

 sunshine more than usual ! But even these and many other 

 statistics which might be quoted scarcely give an idea of 

 the summer, which consisted of one bright hot day after 

 another for months with hardly an interval, drying up the 

 ground to a most unusual depth, so that one wondered how 

 any plants survived. Houses on clay round London and 

 elsewhere suffered greatly, the clay shrinking from dryness 

 under their foundations and causing serious cracks and 

 displacements in masonry. If the foundations of a building 

 cannot be made deep enough (it would have required a 

 depth of three or four feet or more last summer), it is im- 

 portant that they should be of uniform depth, so that the 



