THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB.
93
result is that by the end of the year you get the total of each month, and these
totals added together give the yearly amount. You will soon get interested in the
subject, and begin to compare the quantity which falls in one year with the
quantity which fell in another year, and the quantity which falls in one part of the
country with the quantity which fell in another part. As it happens, Essex is one of
the driest parts of the British Isles, and the yearly average in this county is about
22 inches, and in rare cases it will not exceed 14 inches. That is to say if
all the rain which fell had been preserved, if none of it had run away, or evaporated,
then you would have had a depth of 14 inches all over the ground. Just for
curiosity I may tell you what it is in the Lake district; instead of that 22 inches
the average quantity of rain at the hamlet of Seathwaite is 140 inches, about six
times as much as you have here ; there is a spot there (the Stye) at a level of 1,000
feet where the rainfall in the average year is 175 inches, and where in a wet one
it will reach 200 or 250 inches. I think I am right in quoting 225 as being the
fall there in one year, that is, about ten times as much as there is here. That is
somewhat of a wet place ! Bearing on that I may give you a hint which may be
useful for any who want to go to the Lakes to enjoy themselves. Don't go in the
fashionable months of July, August, or September. That is almost the worst
time you could go, but if you go in the spring months of April, May, or June,
you will have very little more rain than if you had stayed in Essex. That
is the time to go to the Lake district. I do not mean to say it never rains in the
spring months. I was once making this remark about the desirability of going
to the Lakes in the spring, and two years afterwards I met a friend who had
been at the lecture. He said, "Ob, Mr. Symons, you did let us into it ! You
told us to go to the Lakes in the spring, and we went there in June, and it rained
nearly every day." I said, "I am sorry ; all I can say is that it was quite an
exceptional case." He said, "Very likely, but we got the exception." But as
a rule the rainfall in the Lake district is heavy in the summer and autumn and
small in the spring months.
I think I have nearly disposed of the question of the rainfall, except that there
is one form of it we should say a little about. That is Snow. There are few
persons who examine snow minutely, but there is hardly a more exquisite body
than newly formed snow if you view it under the microscope, or by means of a
Coddington lens. True, you must put the microscope cut of doors and get it
thoroughly cold first, and then if you examine the flakes you will find them to be
objects of extreme beauty. But meteorologists have to deal with snow from
another point of view. Snow is of course water in the form of ice, and as such
is to be got into our rain-gauge, and the most troublesome part—and indeed the
only really troublesome part—of the duty of a rainfall observer is to measure
snow. It is not comfortable to go out and measure snow, nor is it the easiest
thing in the world to measure it; it drifts, and it is not easy to find places where
the fall is level. If a fall of snow be heavy the rain-gauge funnel will be more than
full, and then of course you are in a fix to know how much you ought to take,
and sometimes when, as in the memorable case of January, 1881, the snow that
falls in one field is whisked up and dropped down into the next field, it may
be measured twice over, or the rain-gauge may be found to have been
blown empty. To provide for such difficulties we have laid down some very
simple rules. The first one is that if the snow is not more than enough to fill
the funnel, you simply take your measure glass indoors and warm it, or else you
will have it crack with the sudden chill, Fill it full of warm water, and pour