ON MEXEOBOLOGICAI. OBSERVATIONS ON BEN NEVIS. 49 



Report of the Committee, consisting of Professor Crum Browx 

 {Secretary), Mr. Milne-Home, Dr. John Murray, Lord McLaren, 

 and Dr. Buchan, appointed for the purpose of co-operating ivith 

 the Scottish Meteorological Society in making Meteorological 

 Obsei^ations on Ben Nevis. 



The laborious work of observing hourly by night and by day has been 

 carried on by Mr. Omond and his assistants during the past year with the 

 same enthusiasm and continuity as in previous years ; and the tive daily 

 observations at Fort William, in connection with the observatory, have 

 similarly been made with the greatest regularity by Mr. Livingston. 



The state of the health of the observers, occasioned by their continuous 

 residence on the top of the mountain, where active exercise in the open 

 air is practically precluded during most of the year, rendered it abso- 

 lutely necessary to give them relief daring last winter. Accordingly 

 the services of Mr. Drysdale, B.Sc, were secured for six months, thus 

 affording Messrs. Omond and Rankin three months' residence each in 

 Edinburgh, during which they gave assistance in the office of the 

 Scotti.sh Meteorological Society. In this way effective help was given 

 in the preparation of the report, for the ' Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of Edinburgh,' of the Ben Nevis observations from the opening of 

 the observatory in November 1883 to December 1887, to which date the 

 report has been brought down. To thesd observations have been added 

 the five daily observations made at the low-level station at Fort William. 

 All of these observations are already printed, and as the report itself is 

 now nearly all in type, the volume will shortly be ready for publication. 

 The delaj- of publication has been occasioned by the extension of the 

 period to December last and by a pressure of other wox'k, which has 

 precluded ]\[r. Buchan from giving more than a small portion of his time 

 to the preparation of the I'eport. 



A grant of 251. was obtained from the Government Research Fund in 

 May last for the purchase of the necessary apparatus for photographing 

 clouds and other meteorological phenomena at the observatory. Atten- 

 tion is meantime chieiiy directed to clouds, halos, and other optical 

 phenomena, and much interest is attached to the questions which have 

 been already raised by these lines of research that give good promise of 

 leading to a knowledge of the constituents of clouds, but more particu- 

 larly of the exact forms of the ice-crystals of which many of them are 

 composed. 



During the year Mr. Omond has continued the observations on earth- 

 currents, begun by Mr. H. N. Dickson in a previous year, and has traced 

 an important connection between them and the general state of the 

 weather. Mr. Rankin has collected the eighteen cases of St. Elmo's Fire 

 wliich have occurred at the observatory and discussed the observations 

 of pressure, temperature, winds, &c., for thirty hours previous and 

 eighteen hours subsequent to their occurrence, together with the cyclones 

 and other weather phenomena which, as shown by the daily weather- 

 maps of the Meteorological Office, had occuri'ed in North-western Europe 

 at the times. The papers on these subjects will shortly appear in the 

 'Journal of the Scottish Meteorological Society.' As regards the cases 

 1888. E 



