104 Obituary Notices of Fellows deceased. 



GEORGE JAMES SYMONS. 1838-1900. 



GEORGE JAMES SYMONS was born at Queen's Row, Pimlico, on 

 August 6, 1838, and was educated at St. Peter's Collegiate School, 

 Eaton Square, at Thornton in Leicestershire, and at the School of 

 Mines. 



In 1856, at the age of 18, he was elected a member of the British 

 Meteorological Society, now the Royal Meteorological Society. 

 During these forty-four years he rendered invaluable services to 

 the Society, as contributor to its ' Proceedings,' as member of council, 

 vice-president, honorary secretary, and president; and in 1900 he was 

 for the second time elected president in view of the jubilee of the 

 Society, which was held in April. Indeed, it is very largely due to 

 his able, well directed, and untiring exertions during these forty-four 

 years that the Royal Meteorological Society holds its present position. 



On the invitation of Admiral Fitzroy, he became a member of the 

 staff of the Meteorological Department of the Board of Trade, in 

 1860 ; but this he resigned in 1863, in order to give his whole time 

 to the collection of statistics of the rainfall of the British Islands. 

 His first contribution to science was a paper on the thunderstorms of 

 June, 1857, and it is interesting to note that it was during the 

 investigation of this inquiry he received the bias towards rainfall 

 inquiries, which rapidly became his absorbing life-work. 



This life-work may justly be considered as having begun in earnest 

 in 1860, by the publication of Rain Returns of that year, with the 

 view of showing the then known distribution of rain over the British 

 Islands. The large gaps this revealed in our knowledge of this 

 important element of our British climate acted on Mr. Symons' mind 

 simply as the strongest incitement to the establishing of numerous 

 rain-gauges in all parts of these islands. In this work he at once 

 evinced quite remarkable ability in establishing these stations, and 

 in most effectively supervising them, and the statistics of rainfall 

 supplied by them. By his well-directed energy, the results published 

 in 1866 were justly regarded as fairly representative of the distri- 

 bution of the rainfall of that year over the British Islands. In the 

 last published Annual Rainfall, 1899, the number of Rainfall Stations 

 is 3528, distributed thus 2894 in England and Wales, 446 in Scotland, 

 and 188 in Ireland. During this long term of years, his relations with 

 observers and societies, by letter or by personal visits, were most 

 cordial, intimate, and continuous, the object aimed at, on all hands, 

 being to make the record of the rainfall of each year as complete as 



