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SOME PRESSURE AND TEMPERATURE RESULTS FOR 
THE GREAT PLATEAU OF SOUTH AFRICA. 
By J. KR. Surron, M.A. (Cantab.). 
(Communicated April 24, 1901.) 
The accompanying notes were begun during 1897. The intention 
was to make them serve as an introduction to an inquiry of a 
physical rather than a climatological character. But their aggregate 
magnitude has increased step by step along a divergent direction, 
‘ until it seemed better to present them as a separate paper, leaving 
the other matter for a future communication. 
In its present form the paper contains the preliminaries of an 
attempt to make a systematic comparison between the tempera- 
tures and pressures of the air over a plateau and corresponding 
coast station (on much the same lines as the comparisons which are 
made between the summit and base of a mountain), at two of the 
most favourable geographical positions it is possible to combine, and 
with what are perhaps the best materials ever used for the purpose 
in South Africa. Plateau meteorology has a special interest all its 
own. Observations taken upon the summit of an elevated peak are 
important, because they tell us roughly something of the conditions 
prevailing in the free air at the same altitude, albeit balloons and 
kites give results which are superior in every way, excepting that 
continuity and regularity are not yet possible. Balloons or mountains, 
however, tell us only of the air: this great South African plateau 
gives us something more than a rough notion of what the climate of 
a great portion of the earth’s surface will be like in ages to come, 
when the cooling earth has absorbed a considerable volume of its 
liquid envelope. 
The stations referred to are Kimberley and Durban. The 
Kimberley results, given in Tables 13-24, are from the observations 
taken by the late Mr. G. J. Lee, F’.R.Met.S., at his own second order 
station, with instruments that were very good of their kind, and nearly 
all properly certified at Kew. These instruments are now deposited 
at Kenilworth (Kimberley), and, with the exception of the wet bulb, 
