DISTRICT OF CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORELAND. 
629 
RemarJis. 
The fall of rain throug-hout the Lake District in 1850, is slightly above the average 
of the six preceding years. At Seathwaite, the depth is 1'77 inch over the average 
of this period. The largest daily falls in 1850, at the three principal stations, are 
grouped as under; — 
Wastdale. 
Langdale. 
Seathwaite. 
days. 
days. 
days. 
Between 1 an inch and 1 inch 
38 
39 
39 
Between 1 inch and 2 indies 
29 
37 
34 
Between 2 inches and 3 inches 
5 
6 
13 
Between 3 inches and 4 inches 
2 
2 
6 
Between 4 inches and 5 inches 
1 
Days in 1850 exceeding 0’5 inch in depth 
74 
85 
92 
Temperature . — At Seathwaite, the average mean temperature of the last five years 
is 47°'38 ; mean of maximum, 52°'32 ; mean of minimum, 42°'43. At Whitehaven, 
on the west coast, seventeen miles distant in a direct line, bearing W.N.W. from 
Seathwaite, the mean of the maximum for the same period is 54°'18 ; mean of mini- 
mum, 44°*25 ; average mean temperature, 49°'22. 
The mean difference between the two places is, in the maximum, ]°’86; in the 
minimum, 1°'825 and in the mean L‘84, the temperature at Whitehaven being higher 
than at Seathwaite by these quantities. The mean temperature at Whitehaven from 
eighteen years’ observations is 49° ; at Greenwich, the mean for seventy-eight years is 
48°‘3 ; and at Somerset House for sixty-nine years, 49°'5. 
The radiation of heat from the earth’s surface at night, as indicated by self-regis- 
tering thermometers fully exposed to the sky on grass, appears on the whole to be 
greater in the mountain valleys than at the coast, and particularly in summer ; but, 
occasionally in the winter months, the results are strangely and unaccountably 
anomalous. Thus, in November 1850, the mean amount or effect indicated was only 
0°‘90, and in December the mean reading of the thermometer on the grass was 
identical with that at 4 feet above the surface. At Whitehaven, the amount in those 
months was 5°’25 and 5°'86. Yet the same instrument (which has been in use at 
Seathwaite since 1846) in nearly all the other months of 1850, shows a greater extent 
of radiation than at Whitehaven. Results almost equally abnormal were presented 
in the winter of 1846 and 1847, and as such they were omitted from the Tables for 
that year*. I have examined the thermometer employed at Seathwaite for indicating 
the direct effect of terrestrial radiation; the column is perfect, and I am satisfied it 
has no material index error, and that it is correctly read off; moreover, it is exposed 
in the same place throughout the year. The cause of its occasional anomalous indi- 
cations in the winter months must therefore be left unexplained for the present. 
MDCCCLI. 
* Philosophical Transactions, Part I, 1849, p. 85. 
4 M 
