For rain and dew together Dalton makes the mean of England and Wales 36 inches, amounting in a year to 28 cubic miles of water.

From observations made in 1804 at Exeter, Chichester, Lon. don, Diss, Chatsworth, W. Bridgford, Ferriby, Lancaster, and Kendal, it appears that December was the wettest month in four of these places; June in two, May and November each in one, and April and December in one instance equally wetter than the rest. Erxleben asserts, ii. 735, that the drops of rain at the equator are sometimes an inch in diameter.

Ulloa affirms that it never rains in Peru; but that for a part of the year the atmosphere is obscured by thick fogs, called garuas.

In some parts of Arabia it seldom rains more than two or three times in two or three years; but the dews are heavy and refresh the soil and supply the few plants, which grow in these regions, with moisture.

[Editor.

SECTION III.

Fall of Butter-like Dew in different Parts of Ireland.

THIS curious phænomenon is noticed in two separate articles in vol. xix of the Philosophical Transactions. The first is an extract of a letter from Mr. Robert Vans of Kilkenny, dated Nov. 15, 1695, as follows:

"We have had of fate, in the county of Limerick and Tipperary, showers of a matter, like butter or grease. If this be rubbed on ones hand, it will melt, but laid by the fire, it dries and grows hard, having a very stinking smell. This last night some fell at

this place, which I saw this morning.

It is gathered into pots and other vessels, by some of the inhabitants of this place."

The second article is still more minute, and proceeds from the well-known pen of the Bishop of Cloyne, bearing date April

1796.

"Having very diligently inquired concerning a very odd phenomenon, which was observed in many parts of Munster and Leinster, the best account I can collect of it is as follows: For a good part of last winter and spring, there fell in several places, a kind of thick dew, which the country people called butter, from the consistency and colour of it, being soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow; it fell always in the night, and chiefly in moorish low grounds, on the top of the grass, and often on the thatch of cabins. It was seldom observed in the same places twice: it commonly lay on the earth for near a fortnight, without changing its colour; but then dried and turned black. Cattle fed in the fields where it lay indifferently, as in other fields. It fell in lumps, often as large as the end of one's finger, very thin and scatteringly; it had a strong ill scent, somewhat like the smell of church-yards or graves; and indeed we had during most of that season very stinking fogs, some sediment of which might probably occasion this stinking dew, though I will by no means pretend to offer that as a reason of it: I cannot find that it was kept long, or that it bred any worms or insects; yet the superstitious country people, who had scald or sore heads, rubbed them with this substance, and said it healed them."

[Phil. Tran. 1696.

We have already had occasion to observe that substances of various kinds are frequently carried into the atmosphere by their own levity or other force. Fat or butter is nothing more than a mixture of hydrogen and carbon in certain relative proportions to each other. Both these substances are often extricated from the surface of the low moorish grounds here referred to; and from their affinity to each other, very generally ascend in combination, forming what the chemists call hydro-carbonat, or carburetted hydrogen gas: and hence, in the instance before us, the combina. tion of these two substances, was in all probability such as to produce the unctuous material here described *.

[EDITOR.

SECTION IV.

Dense Fog on the Island of Sumatra.

By William Marsden, Esq.

In the year 1775 the S. E. or dry monsoon, set in about the middle of June, and continued with very little intermission till the month of March in the following year. So long and severe a drought had not been experienced there in the memory of the oldest man. The verdure of the ground was burnt up, the trees were stripped of their leaves, the springs of water failed, and the earth every where gaped in fissures. For some time a copious dew falling in the night supplied the deficiency of rain; but this did not last long: yet a thick fog, which rendered the neighbouring hills invisible for months together, and nearly obscured the sun, never ceased to hang over the land, and add a gloom to the pros. pect already but too melancholy. The Europeans on the coast suffered extremely in sickness; about a fourth part of the whole number being carried off by fevers and other bilious distempers, the depression of spirits which they laboured under, not a little contributing to hasten the fatal effects. The natives also died in

great numbers.

The substance called Honey-dew does not regularly belong to this division of our work. It is usually an excrementitious secretion of various insects that adhere to the lower surface of the leaves of plants; and we shall notice it accordingly in the subsequent divisions of the Gallery of Nature and Art, which will be found to comprise the curiosities of Zoology. The dew of plants is in like manner an aqueous secretion from the secernent vessels of plants.

EDITOR.

In the month of November that year, the dry season having then exceeded its usual period, and the S.S. winds continuing with unremitting violence, the sea was observed to be cov red, to the distance of a mile, and in some places a league from shore, with fish floating on the surface. Great quantities of them were at the same time driven on the beach or left there by the tide, some quite alive, others dying, but the greatest part quite dead. The fish thus found were not of one but various species, both large and small, flat and round, the cat-fish and mullet being generally the most prevalent. The numbers were prodigious, and overspread the shore to the extent of some degrees; of this I had ocular proof or certain information, and probably they extended a considerable way farther than I had opportunity of making inquiry. Their first appearance was sudden; but though the numbers diminished, they continued to be thrown up, in some parts of the coast, for at least a month, furnishing the inhabitants with food, which, though attended with no immediate ill consequence, probably contributed to the unhealthiness so severely felt. No alteration in

the weather had been remarked for many days previous to their appearance. The thermometer stood as usual at the time of year

at about 85°.

Various were the conjectures formed as to the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon, and almost as various and contradictory were the consequences deduced by the natives from an omen so portentous; some inferring the continuance, and others, with equal plausibility, a relief from the drought. With respect to the cause, I must confess myself much at a loss to account for it satisfactorily. If I might hazard a conjecture, and it is not offered as any thing more, I would suppose, that the sea requires the mixture of a due proportion of fresh water to temper its saline quality, and enable certain species of fish to subsist in it. Of this salu. brious correction it was deprived for an unusual space of time, not only by the want of rain, but by the ceasing of many rivers to flow into it, whose sources were dried up. I rode across the mouths of several perfectly dry, which I had often before passed in boats. The fish no longer experiencing this refreshment, necessary as it would seem to their existence, sickened and perished as in a corrupted element.

[Phil. Trans. 1781.

SECTION V.

Violent Showers of Rain at Denbigh in a Communication to Dr. (Sir Hans) Sloane, Secretary to the Royal Society.

TUESDAY the 16th of July, 1706, about eight o'clock in the morning, it began to rain in and about Denbigh, which continued incessantly for thirty hours, but not very violently till about three or four o'clock on Wednesday morning, when it rained somewhat faster, attended with a terrible noise like thunder, with some flashes of lightning, and a boisterous wind. About break of day

the rain and wind began to abate of their violence, lessening gra. dually till about one or two o'clock in the afternoon, when it quite ceased, and the air became clear and somewhat calm. On the Tuesday the wind blew south west, but on the Wednesday it was come to the north west.

The effects of this great storm were dismal, for it caused the overflowing of all the rivers in Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Merionethshire, &c. which spoiled a great deal of corn, and took off all the hay that was mowed, near the banks of the rivers, which were carried by the stream in such vast quantities down to the bridges that it choked the arches and inlets, so as to break down above a dozen large bridges. Great oaks and other large trees were rooted up and swept away, with several quickset hedges, and some quillets by the side of the river Elwy were so covered with stones and gravel, that the owners cannot well tell whereabouts their hedges and landmarks stood; and the same river has altered its course in some places, so as to rob the land. lords on one side of some acres, and bestowed as much on the opposite side. Two or three rivulets that conveyed water to some mills have been so choked up with stones and gravel, as to make it hardly worth the expence of clearing.

It is affirmed by many people that the great floods were not so much the effects of the rain, as the breaking out of a vast number of springs, in such places as they were never known to flow from before. In the town of Denbigh a great many broke out in the houses and stables, especially in that part which lies next the castle on the north side; some of them with a great deal of vio. lence, and in such a quantity, that it is said that three of these