DISTRICT OF CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORELAND. 
83 
Note . — The Lake District gauges are 5 inches in diameter ; they are all of the same 
form and construction, and are elevated about 18 inches above the surface. [During 
1844, 1845 and part of 1846, they were raised only 6 inches above the ground : in the 
course of the latter year they were altered to their present height. From a series of 
daily observations made in 1847 (vide Table) at Seathwaite, it appears that at 18 inches 
a gauge receives about 2^ per cent, less rain than at 6 inches above the surface.] 
The funnel rims are of stout sheet brass, so that the apertures cannot readily lose 
their circular form. The metres (Howard’s) were all made by Mr. Bate of the 
Poultry, London. The rain (except at five stations) is read off daily at nine o’clock 
A.M., and each day is accounted wet in which any appreciable deposition is found in 
the instrument. The rain at St. James’s Church Steeple, at Gatesgarth and Eskdale 
Head, is measured weekly; and at Round Close and Gillerthwaite once or twice a 
month. 
The gauges at and in the vicinity of Whitehaven, are 8 inches in diameter, and 
the metres show distinctly each separate thousandth of an inch. 
Before concluding to use a gauge of 5 inches diameter for the Lake Districts, I 
placed one of Howard’s gauges in my garden, within a few yards of the 8-inch plu- 
viometer, and measured the contents of each every morning for six months. From 
the 1st of August 1843 to the 31st of January 1844, the gauge of 8-inches aperture 
received 23*997 inches, and the 5-inch gauge 23*765 inches I attribute this trifling 
difference to the circumstance of the larger gauge-metre being graduated to lo^oo th 
of an inch, whilst the smaller only indicates xioth, or half a hundredth of an inch. 
Remarks. 
1845. — At Seathwaite, there have been thirty-one days in which the fall was be- 
tween 1 and 2 inches ; fifteen days between 2 and 3 inches ; five days between 3 and 
4 inches ; one day between 4 and 5 inches, and one day between 6 and 7 inches. 
On the 27th of November, at nine a.m., there was measured at Seathwaite 6*62 
inches, and on the 26th and 27th nearly 10 inches, being unquestionably the greatest 
quantity of rain which has ever been recorded in the same period in the British 
Islands. 
At Langdale Head, in Westmoreland, the fall on the 27th was 6*28 inches, and on 
the 26th and 27th nearly 9 inches. 
On the 22nd of April 1792, Dr. Dalton measured 4*592 inches at Kendal, a re- 
markably wet locality; but I find on inquiry that the greatest fall at that place in 
twenty-four hours, during the present century, is rather short of 3 inches. 
Of the total quantity of rain measured in the Vale of Borrowdale in 1845, 106*58 
inches fell in the six months of January, March, August, October, November and 
December ; and nearly 46 inches in the two latter months. The quantity in De- 
cember, at some of the stations, is more than falls at many places in England during 
a whole year. 
The fall at Seathwaite is more than three times the quantity at Whitehaven, one 
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