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the expenses of balloon ascents, to be undertaken for tlie 
purpose of obtaining additional data, of a reliable character, 
to serve as a basis for future investigations. The Author, 
therefore, thought it might be worth while to submit to 
the Society some results which, although confessedly im- 
perfect, seem to him to indicate very clearly the existence 
of a law of distribution of temperature in the higher regions 
of the atmosphere in the different seasons in different lati- 
tudes of Europe and Asia, which appears to have hitherto 
escaped notice, and which seems likely to have an important 
bearing upon many interesting questions in meteorology. 
From numerous observations made at elevated stations in 
Europe and India, it has been concluded, 1st, — That the 
general rate of decrease of the temperature of the atmosphere 
with increase of height, is least in low, and greatest in high 
latitudes ; and 2nd, — That the rate of decrease is greatest in 
the summer and least in the winter months. Some results, 
however, which the Author obtained in the course of an 
investigation of the relations which exist between falls of rain 
and changes in the decrement of temperature on ascending in 
the atmosphere, and of barometric pressure, in different loca- 
lities, led him to doubt the general correctness of the second 
of these conclusions, and he has therefore examined all the 
observations that were accessible to him which seemed likely 
to throw any light on the subject ; and from the results which 
he has obtained he shows that there exists in the temperate 
latitudes of Europe and Asia a belt or zone in which the 
decrease of temperature, for a given ascent in the atmosphere, 
is greatest in the winter months, while at stations north or 
south of this belt, so far at least as observations have yet been 
made, the decrease is greatest in the summer months. 
This belt passes over Portugal, Spain, Sicily, Southern 
Italy, the Caucasian provinces, and Southern Siberia; and 
at places lying within it the changes of temperature produced 
by change of season are greater in the higher than in the 
