206 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



siderably below the average, while the South and East of 

 Great Britain were much wetter than usual.* 



The temperatures during 1909 were also unusual, and 

 in spite of a few warm months, the year as a whole seems 

 to have been colder than usual. 



A short discussion of the weather of each month of 

 1909, by F. J. Brodie, will be found in Symons's Meteoro- 

 logical Magazine for 1909 (Yol. 44), where rainfall tables 

 for the various months are also given. Many features of 

 the weather seem to agree very well with what might be 

 expected. Thus the rainfall for January and February 

 was a good deal below the average, while March was much 

 colder than usual, both of which facts can be accounted 

 for by the absence of the large body of warm Atlantic 

 water. In the same way the extreme dryness of August 

 and September in the South of Ireland may well be due 

 to the fact that the Atlantic water in the neighbourhood 

 was colder than usual. This would, of course, result in 

 the winds blowing from the sea to the land not being so 

 heavily charged with moisture as usual, and a smaller 

 precipitation on the land in consequence. 



It is not, of course, for one moment to be understood 

 that these important effects on the weather are to be 

 attributed to the hydrographic conditions prevailing in 

 the Irish Sea. The body of water in the latter is 

 probably far too small for variations in its condition to 

 have more than a very slight inlluence on the weather, 

 and that only at places actually on the shores of the Irish 

 Sea itself. It seems, however, reasonable to regard the 

 tongue of Atlantic water which flows up the Irish Sea as 

 an index of the Gulf Stream Drift as a whole, and it is to 

 be expected that variations in the latter will affect the 

 weather of these Islands, and, in fact, of North-west 



See an article in " The Times " of Jan. 14th, 1910, by Dr. H. R. Mill. 



