PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. Ixv. 



which I have any note of in my gauge is 9'14in. in October, 

 1907. Record rainfalls were registered also for December 

 last in London and at many other places in the S. and S.E. 

 of England, that at South Kensington being 6'60in., at 

 Bournemouth 9'8in., and at Hindhead, 12in. The 

 January rainfall was also unusually high. Serious floods 

 have followed these rains in many places, and the camps 

 containing our soldiers have been seas of mud, some even 

 worse, I am told, than the one opposite my house at Chickerell 

 on the Oxford Clay. An unusually bad thunderstorm passed 

 over the neighbourhood of London on June 14th, with 

 rainfall in some places of more than 2in., and large hailstones 

 of lin. in diameter. At Teesmouth during a thunderstorm 

 on July 2nd, numbers of gulls and other seabirds were killed 

 by the hailstones, which must have been very large, 300 

 dead gulls being counted in f mile. In spite of the greater 

 severity of tropical thunderstorms, it would seem that deaths 

 from lightning are much rarer in India than England, the 

 suggestion being that the storms occur higher in the air. 

 Tall buildings and tall trees are, however, occasionally 

 struck, especially in mountain districts. Though I have 

 frequently heard the great December rainfall in England 

 ascribed to the war taking place in France and Belgium, and 

 though there seems to be really some evidence that firing 

 does tend to produce rainfall (but only in the immediate 

 neighbourhood), some laboratory experiments have failed 

 to support this theory ; and it has been pointed out that 

 Shoeburyness, where there is so much firing of big guns, 

 has one of the smallest rainfalls in the kingdom. But little 

 has been done in investigating the upper air by means of 

 balloons, as the supply of these ceased with the war ; and 

 before that took place there were more losses than usual of 

 the instruments, through the balloons descending in out-of- 

 the-way places and not being recovered. Further 

 investigations on the signs of the near presence of icebergs 

 seem chiefly to have proved that no reliable test is furnished 

 by the temperature of the water, which does not diminish 



