Papers on meteorology : relating especially to the climate of Britain, and to the variations of the barometer / by Luke Howard.

  • Howard, Luke, 1772-1864.
Date:
1850-1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on meteorology : relating especially to the climate of Britain, and to the variations of the barometer / by Luke Howard. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    In the cold period, December is very dry; which dryness is ominous of wet in January, February and March; carrying the rain in these to an excess over the former period of four and a half, seven and three quarters, and three inches, respect- ively. To these succeeds a dry April (perhaps the worst feature for agriculture of the whole), the rain falling short by nine inches of the former total. This want is hardly supplied by the more copious rains in June; for they come usually accompa- nied by far too much of wind, in the summer of the cold period. August and Sep- tember (contrary to what the inexperienced would predict) are much the drier months in the cold years: yet the lower temperature and cloudy sky counteract the early ripening of the crops. November mounts up, in this period, to the second place for wetness (it has the first in the neighbourhood of London) and often completes the destruction of what the drier weather of the preceding months had come too late to enable us to save. I shall not need (were I more capable of the office) to point out to the experienced farmer the advantages and disadvantages to him of these different arrangements. They are the work of the all-wise Creator; ordered no doubt for the best on the great scale of things. It is for us, instead of vainly wishing them other- wise, to turn to the best account (which we surely may, with the helps derived from accurate observation and a full record,) the opportunities they present. The results in figures, from which the curves I have hitherto treated were laid down, will be found in Tables in the following pages. Fig. 3. (Plate V.) gives the rain under each month, for the whole eighteen years, repre- sented by a full line; in connexion with the average temperature of each month for the like series of years, in a curve (which may be so called without a qualifying remark) corresponding as nearly as those in my ‘Climate of London* ’ with the curve of the suns declination; which I have placed, in a fine dotted line, in connexion with both. This diagram is instructive, as regards the average increase of our rains as the sun ap- proaches us from the south, and their falling off in quantity as he recedes towards the tropic of the other hemisphere: and it serves well for a test of the completeness of the account of temperature through the cycle ; the solar and the thermometric curve agreeing in form, with the like exceptions, as about London; of an accelerated rise in the spring and a retarded fall in the autumn; which I have shown in my work above mentioned to be the necessary conditions of our annual variation. The re- sults in figures belonging to this beautiful curve will be found in the Tables fur- ther on. In figures 4, 5, 6 and 7, (Plate VI.) I have given the rain and temperature of the [* Second Edition, vol. i. “Of the Temperature,” p. 11 to p. 58 : Fig. 2, and Fig. 11 to 15.]