249 



lines in height. The third of May I even coK 

 lected fourteen lines in three hours. It must 

 be remarked, that these observations were no 

 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 ignorant, 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 toises 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. 441 j vol. 

 vi, p. 440 } vol. ix, p. 430 j vol. xii, p. 422. 



f The rain fell thirteen inches two lines in eighteen hours 

 at Viviere, and one inch one line in one hour at Montpellier. 

 {Ann. de Phys., vol. viii, p. 437 ; and Poitevin, Essay on the 

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



