76 REPORT—1874, 
have all, during the past year, been examined and reduced to the compact 
form shown on page 259 of our last Report. The number is, however, so 
great that they would occupy nearly 100 pages of the annual volume, even 
if further condensed and the utmost economy of space exercised. Your 
Committee therefore, although fully impressed with the great value of the 
information which they have thus obtained, do not insert them in the present 
Report, which is necessarily rather heavy from other causes, and reserve 
them for next year, when these causes will be absent. 
Examination of Rain-gauges in situ—Your Committee have always re- 
garded this as the most important branch of their work. Only those who 
have personally inspected large numbers of stations can realize fully the 
variety of details which it is the duty of an inspector to notice and have 
rectified. It is worse than useless to collect masses of statistics unless at 
the same time every effort is made to ascertain that the observations have 
been in all respects properly made. It is therefore with much pleasure that 
we are able to state that the number of stations visited by our Secretary 
since the preparation of our last Report is 50, being, as will be seen by the 
following Table, considerably above the average. 
Number of stations inspected and rain-gauges tested im situ each year :— 
1862 .. 51 Isey .. 50 | 1871... 21 
1863 ,. 44 1868 .. 40 1872 .. 24 
1864 .. 20 1869 .. 115 1873 .. 27 
1865 .. 17 1870 .. 39 1874 .. 50 (to Aug, 12th). 
1866 .. 60 | | 
The total number tested up to the present time is 558, and they are 
tolerably well scattered over Great Britain (as was shown by the map exhi- 
bited at the Meeting, whereon the locality of each station which has been 
visited by our Secretary was marked by a red disk). We can only once 
more express our regret that the limit of our grant prevents our providing 
that which the present system of rainfall observations imperatively requires, 
viz. one permanent travelling inspector. The results of the inspections since 
December 4th, 1872, are given in the usual form in the Appendix to this 
paper. Weare glad to state that asteady approach towards accuracy appears 
to prevail amongst observers, and also a firm conviction that, if it is to be 
attended to at all, it should receive very careful attention. 
List of Stations.—In our last Report we stated that we hoped ‘at an carly 
date to present a revised edition of the list of stations published in the Report 
of this Association for 1865,’ which mainly, in consequence of the work 
under the auspices of your Committee, had become obsolete, as it does not 
contain more than two thirds of the data now collected. This work, though 
mentioned last year for the first time, has been in progress under the super- 
vision of our Secretary for upwards of five years, is now in a forward state, 
and will form a remarkably complete index of all rainfall observations ever 
made in this country, anda voluminous one, too, for it would occupy 60 or 7 
pages of the annual volume instead of less than 50 pages, as was the case 
with the last one. 
Gauges in the Eastern Lake-district—In the autumn of 1866 thirteen 
gauges were placed in the watersheds of Ullswater, Haweswater, Easedale 
Tarn, &c., by Mr. Symons. These were transferred to your Committee in 
1869, and the observations continued at their expense. At their meeting on 
September 18th, 1873, the Secretary reported that seven years had elapsed 
since their erection, that several of them were out of order, and new observers 
