28 MADEIRA METEOROLOGIC. PART HI. 



where the wet-bulb thermometer has not been so well 

 observed, from their more easily noted temperature 

 ranges, at least wherever the latitudes do not vary very 

 much ; and such may be allowed to be the case with 

 Malta, latitude 36 ; Santa Cruz de Teneriffe, latitude 

 28; Ponta Delgada in the Azores, latitude 38; and 

 Madeira, as before, latitude 33. 



Malta, though an island and a very small one, yet 

 being in an inland sea and in a position there essentially 

 dominated by the great African continent, has its range 

 of monthly means of temperature, through the year, 

 rising to 247 against the 12*2 of Madeira, and indicates 

 thereby a lamentable want of watery vapour in her air 

 between the sun and herself. 1 



1 This conclusion so quickly and easily arrived at for Malta, through the 

 method of monthly means of temperature alone, is yet remarkably confirmed 

 by a very important paper in " The Journal of the Scottish Meteorological 

 Society" for April 187.0. The paper is by David Milne-Home, Esq., LL.D., 

 of Milne-Graden, Chairman of the Council of that Society. And if its main 

 purpose is to suggest, both on patriotic and scientific grounds, what may be 

 done to improve the climate and increase the rainfall and humidity of that 

 British possession by planting trees there, it begins by setting forth the ter- 

 rific aridity at present of both its air and soil during a great part of the year 

 as a very clear proof of such improvement being urgently required. 



"Although during winter and spring," as he mentions, "the island is 

 swept over by cold northerly winds, yet during the summer months the heat 

 is so excessive, that frequently in the middle of the day labour has to be 

 suspended ; and as many persons as can get away from the island during 

 these months, migrate to a cooler residence. Not a blade of green grass or 

 any garden produce is then to be seen in Malta ; while the atmosphere, in 

 flowing over the heated surface of the soil, bare, naked, and treeless has its 

 natural temperature raised to such an extent as to make it unpleasant, if not 



