242 DURATIONS OF THE DIFFKRENT WINDS 



the maximum continues at E.N.E., but the minimum is transferred to 

 W.S.W, The range between the durations for the different points ia 

 also greatly increased ; the E.N.E. wind being nearly nine times as fre- 

 quent as the wind from W.S.W., during days of heavy rain i whereas 

 when days of light as well as heavy rain are considered, the range is 

 little more than 2 to 1. The progression in column (6) is determined 

 chiefly by the rains under half an inch 5 for if the heavier rains be ex- 

 cluded by subtracting column (5) from column (4), the positions of 

 the maximum and minimum in the resulting series of numbers remain 

 the same as in column (6), an;l the winds that have a more than aver- 

 age duration lie, as in column (t>) between N.E. through south to S.W. 

 The predominance of the E.N.E. wind will be still less than in col- 

 umn (6) ; the ratio to the mean being only 1.41, and the range less 

 than 2 to 1. 



During the year 1857 to 1859 a record was made each day of the 

 hmirs during any part of which rain or snow was seen to fall, or was 

 believed to have fallen, from the best evidence that could be procured 

 at the time when the entries were made. The want of any instrument 

 for recording the hours in which a fall took place, precluded any more 

 certain mode of procuring the requisite facts ; but although the entries 

 do not claim the same confidence as those made at the regular obser- 

 vation hours, or by aid of self-registering instruments, it is believed 

 that they furnish very fair data for determining approximately the re- 

 lative frequency of the winds that blew during the same hours with 

 rain or snow. 



The distribution of the winds among the several points of the com- 

 pass during the hours in which rain fell is shewn by Table II. 



Column (I) gives the number of hours during any part of which 

 rain fell, arranged according to the direction of the wind during the 

 same hour. Column (2) gives the corresponding numbers when rain 

 amounting to less than half an inch in the day is excluded. Column 

 (3) gives the total duration of each wind within the same period, namely* 

 4he years 1857 to 1859, inclusive. 



The quotients arising from the division of the numbers in (1) and 

 (2) by those in (3), and which are entered in columns (4) and (5), are 

 measures of the frequency of rain for each wind. Thus, of 100 J hours 

 in which the wind was from E.N.E. it rained during some part of each 

 of 219 hours ; but it rained in 39 hours only of 1000 hours of a N.W. 



