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Aet. XXX . — Account of a Meteorological Journal for 1819, 
hept at Kirfauns hy the Reverend Robert Gordon. In a 
Letter to Dr Brewster. 
Sir, 
To render the following tables intelligible to your readers, it 
may perhaps be necessary to explain the plan of the journal 
from which they are taken. In that journal, the day is sup- 
posed to commence at 10 on the morning of one day, and to ter- 
minate at 10 on the morning of the next. At that hour, the 
self-registering thermometers are adjusted ; and the highest and 
lowest points to which they had risen and sunk previous to that 
adjustment, are recorded as the extremes of the preceding twen- 
ty-four hours. The difference between these quantities is car- 
ried to another column, as the range of the thermometer during 
the same period. The last column under the head Thermo- 
meter, contains the mean temperature of water, conveyed in a 
pipe for several hundred yards under ground, at the medium 
depth of about three feet. This temperature is the result of 
three observations taken at equal intervals every month. The 
other columns under this head require no explanation. 
From the want of a self-registering Barometer, my observa- 
tions of that instrument are confined to its actual height at 10 
morning and evening. The columns, therefore, that contain the 
range of the mercury, must be considered only as an approxi- 
mation to the true quantity ; but they serve to show the oscilla- 
tions of the mercurial column, without the trouble of comparing 
two consecutive observations. The difference between the 
morning and evening observations of the same day is entered 
as the range during the day, and the difference between the 
observation in the evening and that of the following morning, is 
entered in another column as the range during the night. 
The columns under the head Hygrometer, contain what I be- 
lieve is not to be found in any other meteorological journal, and 
will therefore require a more particular explanation. Most of 
your readers are probably aware, that of the numerous instru- 
ments given to the world under the name of Hygrometers, there 
is not one that shows correctly either the absolute or relative 
humidity of the atmosphere. The greater part of them de- 
