matter over which meteorologists were very much r. 

 because, if during the years from 1738 to 1760 there r 

 only one year with the rainfall above the average, and 

 period returned, there was not a town nor city in th 

 Kingdom in which the supply of gravitation waterwor 

 not break down. The question was whether the retu 



might occur a period in which the supply would break d< 



rainfall was abo\<- the average an«l lh.it during tin- whole period 

 of one hundred and seventy years there was no precedent for such 

 a state of things. But as there had been such a tremendous 

 excess in those years, it was reasonably probable that such i 

 state of things might occur again. The object of the diagram. 

 however, was to give a general idea of the amount of fluctuation 

 to which the rainfall was subject." 



Concerning the abnormal rainfall referred to by Mr. 

 Symons, I have been to some trouble to ascertain whether 

 this excessively wet period could be traced from the only 

 reliable statistics available, namely, from the paper by 

 Cornelius Walford, f.i.a., f.s.s., on " Famines of the World ? 

 Past and Present," read before the Statistical Society, 

 19th March. 1 [ Hud at periods of exactly 171 years previous 

 to the period mentioned by Mr. Symons, namely, from 1875 

 to 1883, as follows:— 



1704 England — "Hottest and driest summer known for 2<»year>." 



1705 England — "Very dry till end of August." 



1705 Europe— "The temperature rose so hiirh in Kun.pe that it 

 resembled that of a glass house furnace, and butchers' meat 

 was baked in the sun, and from midday to \ p.m. no one 

 ventured out of doors.' ~Ew f . Much.. Vol. xxxix, p. 506. 



