AFTER some years had passed subsequent to the publication of this book in 1883, its publishers, Messrs. Macmillan, informed me that the demand for it just, but only just warranted a revised issue. I shrank from the great trouble of bringing it up to date because it, or rather many of my memoirs out of which it was built up, had become starting-points for elaborate investigations both in England and in America, to which it would be difficult and very laborious to do justice in a brief compass. So the question of a Second Edition was then entirely dropped. Since that time the book has by no means ceased to live, for it continues to be quoted from and sought for, but is obtainable only with difficulty, and at much more than its original cost, at sales of secondhand books. Moreover, it became the starting-point of that recent movement in favour of National Eugenics (see note p. 24 in first edition) which is recognised by the University of London, and has its home in University College. Having received a proposal to republish the book in its present convenient and inexpensive form, I gladly accepted it, having first sought and received an obliging assurance from Messrs. Macmillan that they would waive all their claims to the contrary in my favour. The following small changes are made in this edition. The illustrations are for the most part reduced in size to suit the smaller form of the volume, the lettering of the composites is rearranged, and the coloured illustration is reproduced as closely as circumstances permit. Two chapters are omitted, on "Theocratic Intervention" and on the "Objective Efficacy of Prayer." The earlier part of the latter was too much abbreviated from the original memoir in the Fortnightly Review, 1872, and gives, as I now perceive, a somewhat inexact impression of its object, which was to investigate certain views then thought orthodox, but which are growing obsolete. I could not reinsert these omissions vii viii Bibliography now with advantage, unless considerable additions were made to the references, thus giving more appearance of personal controversy to the memoirs than is desirable. After all, the omission of these two chapters, in which I find nothing to recant, improves, as I am told, the general balance of the book.
17°•0 at Moyeni, Basutoland, on August 23. The mean yearly value of the absolute maxima was 86°•9, and of the corresponding minima 41°•6. The mean temperature for the year was 0°•9 below the average. The stormiest month was October, and the calmest was April.\Ve have also received the official meteorological yearbooks for South Australia (1904) and Mysore (1905). Both of these works contain valuable means for previous years.Forty Years of Southern New Mexico Climate.-Bulletin No. 59 of the New Mexico College of Agriculture contains the meteorological data recorded at the experimental station from 1892 to 1905 inclusive, together with results of temperature and rainfall observations at other stations in the Mesilla Valley for most of the years between 1851 and I8go, published some years ago by General Greely in a " Report on the Climate of New Mexico." The station is situated in lat. 32° IS' N., long. 106° 45' W., and is 3868 feet above sea-level. The data have a general application to those portions of southern New Mexico with an altitude less than 4000 feet. The mean annual temperature for the whole period was 6r 0 •6, mean maximum (fourteen years) 76°•8, mean minimum 41°•4, absolute maximum 106° (which occurred several times), absolute minimum 1° (December, r895). The mean annual rainfall was 8•8 inches ; the smallest yearly amount was J•S inches, in r873, the largest I7•I inches, in 1905. Most of the rain falls during July, August, and September. The relative humidity is low, the mean annual amount being about 51 per cent. The bulletin was prepared by J. D. Tinsley, vice-director of the station.Meteorological Observations in Germany.-The results of the observations made under the system of the Deutsche Seewarte, Hamburg, for Igos, at ten stations of the second order, and at fifty-six storm-warning stations, have been received. This is the twenty-eighth yearly volume published by the Seewarte, and forms part of the series of German meteorological year-books.We have frequently referred to this excellent series, and the volume in question is similar in all respects to its predecessors ; it contains most valuable data relating to the North Sea and Baltic coasts. We note that the sunshine at Hamburg was only 29 per cent. of the possible annual amount, and that there were 103 sunless days ; the rainfall was 25•9 inches, the rainy days being 172 in number.
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