249 



lines in height. The third of May I even col- 

 lected fourteen lines in three hours. It must 

 be remarked, that these observations were 

 not made during a shower, but in an ordinary 

 rain. It is well known, that at Paris there fall 

 only twenty-eight or thirty lines of water in 

 whole months, even in the most rainy*, in 

 March, July, and September. I am not igno- 

 rant, that with us also showers have happened, 

 during which the rain has amounted to more than 

 an inch in an hour-f-, but we must compare only 

 the mean state of the atmosphere in the tem- 

 perate and torrid zones. It appears to result 

 from observations, which I made successively at 

 the foot of Guayaquil, on the shore of the 

 South-sea, and in the town of Quito at one thou- 

 sand four hundred and ninety-two tdises height, 

 that there falls ordinarily two or three times 

 less water in an hour on the back of the Andes, 

 than at the level of the Ocean. It rains oftener 

 in the mountains, but there falls less water at 

 once, in a given time. The sky is sensibly more 

 serene on the banks of the Rio Negro, at Maroa, 

 and at San Carlos, than at Javita and on the 



* Arago, in the Annates de Physique, vol. iii, p. 44 L $ 

 vol. vi, p. 440 ; vol. ix, 430 ; vol. xii, p. 422. 



f The rain fell thirteen inches two lines in eighteen hours 

 atViviere, and one inch one line in one hour at Montpellier, 

 (Ann. de Phys., vol. viii, p. 437 j and Poitevin, Essay on the 

 Climate of Languedoc, Journ. de Phys., vol. lx, p. 391.) 



