Note * — Letter V

A very intelligent gentleman assures me (and he speaks from upwards of forty years’ experience) that the mean rain of any plate cannot be ascertained till a person has measured it for a very long period. ‘If I had only measured the rain,’ says he, ‘for the four first years from 1740 to 1743, I should have said the mean rain at Lyndon was 16 and a half inches for the year, if from 1740 to 1750, 18 and a half inches. The mean rain before 1763 was 20 and a quarter, from 1763 and since, 25 and a half; from 1770 to 1780, 26. If only 1773, 1774 and 1775 had been measured, Lyndon mean rain would have been called 32 inches.’