SECTIONAL TRANSACTIONS .—E. 331 
A new method is outlined which obviates these difficulties by utilising 
median and quartile values. Since mathematical proof of its assumptions 
is not easy, it is applied experimentally to a large continental area along a 
zone of climatic transition. ‘The High Plains and the neighbouring Rocky 
Mountain Piedmont are thus found to fall into five clearly defined rainfall 
regions : 
(1) The Southern Type with the major rainfall season between April and 
October inclusive, e.g. Dodge City. 
(2) The Central Region with rains increasing in April still, but declining 
rapidly in September, e.g. North Platte. 
(3) The Northern Region with May and June as the only two really rainy 
months, e.g. Miles City. 
(4) The Laramie Region with light spring rains decreasing rapidly in 
June, e.g. Denver. 
(5) The New Mexico Region with late summer rains bursting abruptly 
in July, e.g. Santa Fé. 
The two latter regions thus differ widely from each other, and the contrast 
between Denver and Colorado Springs is very marked despite the absence 
of physical barriers. ‘The only feature common to the far west is the low 
rainfall expectation for June. The extension of this feature eastwards 
towards the Plains proper produces a transitional zone within which 
drought is often very serious. Other transitions towards the western 
deserts and the humid east are also observable in some of the 73 charts 
studied, but the major regions are clear and logical in outline. 
Some correlations with crop belts are observable, yet the regions outlined 
are capable of both definition and subdivision on the basis of criteria 
yielded by precipitation data alone. 
Discussion on previous communications (3.0). 
Prof. E. G. R. TayLtor.—Perfidious Albion : climate and character in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (3.15). 
The attitude of the average educated man towards racial character in 
this period is summarised in a poem translated from the French in 1603, 
when a Scottish succeeded a Tudor monarch : 
“O see! How full of wonders strange is Nature ! 
Sith in each Climate, not alone in Stature, 
Strength, colour, hair, but that men differ do 
Both in their Humours and their Manners too. 
The Northern man is fair, the Southern foul ; 
That’s white, this black, that smiles and this doth scowl. 
Th’one’s blithe and frolick, th’other dull and froward, 
Th’one’s full of courage, th’other a fearful coward !’ 
Dr. H. C. Darspy.—~Some ideas of climate and weather in the later Middle 
Ages (3.45). 
From A.D. 1100 on to the close of the Middle Ages, contemporary ideas 
upon meteorology and climatology were drawn from three sources: 
(1) Traditional scholarship, the foundations of which had been laid in the 
works of Pliny, Solinus and St. Isidore of Seville. (2) Those Arabic texts 
which were now becoming known to the West and which, in turn, were 
revealing the scientific treatises of Aristotle. (3) Direct observation of 
