AT THE ANNUAL MEETING APRIL I, 1911. 225
expeditions and fungus forays and the newly instituted moss
and lichen foray. Many of these forays have led to "finds"
new to Essex and, on one occasion, new to Britain.
Turning now to the scientific work of the Club in the future,
there are two pleas I wish to make. The first is a plea in favour
of Meteorology. I hoped to have secured Mr. William Marriott,
assistant-secretary of the Royal Meteorological Society, to
address the Club on Local Meteorology and Phenology, but
found it difficult to enlist sympathy in my project. I gathered
that it was thought that the weather was a matter of national,
not local, concern ! For the purpose of national statistics of
course I agree, but still there are many local problems which
are of purely local interest and which only a local society can
tackle.
To give an example, the rainfall in Essex varies to an
extraordinary extent within very short distances. Mr.
Chancellor's rain gauge at the bottom of New London Road,
Chelmsford, gives readings widely different from Dr. Thresh's
at the top. We watch the storms following the valleys, yet
expect greater precipitation at greater altitudes. However
clearly the general laws governing rainfall are understood, we
need numerous comparative determinations in order to under-
stand the application of those laws to any particular locality,
and in Essex such determinations are likely to give results of
special interest and value, owing to its geographical position
and character.
Again, how little we know of the hygroscopic condition of
the air in Essex and the possibility of water condensation to
such an extent as to render dewponds (if indeed they are dew-
ponds) possible in the London Clay districts, which in times of
drought suffer so severely. How fruitful even accurate com-
parisons of temperature between adjoining areas, differing in
altitude, aspect or soil, might be in the lessons they teach (for
example as to the planting of fruit trees to avoid late frosts).
What a wealth of information remains to be collected upon the
correlation of the opening of flowers, migration of birds, and
appearance of insects, with weather conditions. Mr. Miller
Christy recorded the abundant flowering of the Elm in Essex two
seasons ago, but no member of the Club was able to tell us the
meteorological conditions which were responsible, although the