“ 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 747 
arrest ions of another kind, and thus act as though it were a metallic electrode. 
The deposit of copper upon a semi-permeable membrane forming the cathode 
boundary between copper sulphate solution and a solution of ferrocyanide of potas- 
sium was demonstrated experimentally to the meeting. The paper appears in the 
‘Zeitschrift fiir Physikalische Chemie,’ vol. vi. p. 71, 1890. 
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. 
The following Reports and Papers were read :— 
1. Report of the Committee on the Ben Nevis Observatory. 
See Reports, p. 174. 
2. Report of the Committee on Tidal Observations in Canada. 
See Reports, p. 183. 
3. Report of the Cominittee for Comparing and Reducing Magnetic 
Observations.—See Reports, p. 172. 
4. Report of the Committee for Determining the Seasonal Variation in the 
Temperatures of Lakes, Rivers, and Estuaries.—See Reports, p. 92. 
9. Report of the Committee on Solar Radiation See Reports, p. 144. 
6. Report of the Committee on the Volcanic and Seismological Phenomena 
of Japan.—See Reports, p. 160. 
7. On a Meteorological Observatory recently established on Mont Blane. 
By A. Lawrence Rorcn, 8.B., F.R.Met.Soc. of Boston, U.S.A. 
It is generally conceded that the future progress of meteorology depends chiefly 
upon the study of the upper regions of the atmosphere. Thus the vital, and at the 
present time, disputed question as to the vertical decrease of temperature in 
eyclones and anti-cyclones, upon which rest our theories of the general movements 
of the atmosphere, and hence our deductions expressed in weather forecasts, can 
only be settled by simultaneous observations at high and low altitudes. Dis- 
regarding balloons as unavailable for this purpose, we must turn to the mountain 
observatories, for whose establishment and maintenance large sums of money have 
been expended by various nations. 
Until recently the highest meteorological station in the world was in the 
United States on Pike’s Peak, at an elevation of 14,134 feet above the sea, while 
among the ten or more European stations, the loftiest has been that in the Austrian 
Alps on the Sonnenblick, at an altitude of 10,170 feet. The French, however, who 
have contributed more towards mountain meteorology than any other nation by 
their fine observatories on the Pic du Midi, the Puy de Dome, and the Mont Ven- 
toux, may now claim what is probably the highest meteorological station in the 
world in the one which has just been established by M. J. Vallot on Mont Blanc, 
at an altitude of about 14,320 feet above sea-level. 
The summit of Mont Blanc, rising to a height of 15,780 feet, and dominating 
3c 2 
