The greatest height of the thermometer in the shade in summer is 72; the greatest depression 58. In winter it is under 55, except on some uncommonly warm days accompanied with a southerly wind, the depression at that season has never exceeded 28. I earnestly sought throughout the west for further accounts of climate, but scientific pursuits are thought so little of in Ireland that my endeavours were in vain. There are some people I know, who consider all such inquiries as mere theory, and altogether useless—a short examination, however, will prove the fallacy of such opinions. Science was exemplified by the late Dr. Percival; and Dr. Aikin, at Manchester, and the members of the Lunar Club at Birmingham, have unceasingly pursued it. The Athenæum and Lyceum arose under the patronage of Roscoe, Currie, and Rathbone, at Liverpool; and it is from societies formed for these purposes that Arkwright, Bolton, Watts, Wedgewood, Strutt of Derby, Brinkesly, &c. &c. have sprung, and with them the rapid and astonishing progress of English manufacture has taken place within the last thirty years, enlightening and enriching the middle class of society, whose general acquaintance with mechanics and chemistry, is truly astonishing. Where philosophical knowledge is neglected, superstition must prevail in religion, ignorance in agriculture, and every thing belonging to it, and error in many of the common concerns of life. The unexampled perfection of the comforts of Englishmen, is chiefly to be attributed to a familiar intercourse with the arts, the produce created by them is daily and hourly exchanged with the most refined and the most barbarous nations of the earth; but from all, Britain draws wealth, and the result has been power, commensurate with the knowledge of her children. WATERFORD COUNTY. Dr. Smith relates that the air in the county of Waterford, and even of the greater part of Ireland, had in his time become more temperate and salubrious, because, having had more extensive woods and bogs, it was more subject to rain and moisture. Before an east wind the refraction of the air becomes much greater than usual, especially towards that part bounded by the sea; at this time vessels seen in the horizon, rocks, islands, promontories, and other objects, appear much higher than common, and seem in a manner lifted into the air; and this generally is the case even a day or two before the wind blows from that point. In Waterford the winters are attended rather with rain than with snow, and neither snow nor frost continues there so long in the neighbourhood of the coast, as in the more inland parts of the country. The winter of 1744, when the northern part of Ireland was covered with snow for many weeks, to the great destruction of the cattle, here was little in this county, and what fell continued not above two days. In the winter of 1739, also, when there was one of the severest frosts ever known in Ireland, with large quantities of snow, very little fell in the neighbourhood of the ocean, and the cattle grazed there as usual, while at the same time there was little or no thaw in the more inland parts for six weeks after. Dr. Smith says, that the sea on this coast becomes sometimes phosphorescent, emitting a strong light in the dark, and that when this phenomenon appears in the winter time, it portends an approaching storm.* CORK, LAT. 51° 53′ 54′′. LONG. 8° 30′′. Though Cork is a populous trading city, I was not able to obtain from that quarter much information with regard to climate; but Mr. Aldworth informs me, that a botanical garden has lately been attached to the Cork Institution, and that a regular meteorological journal will be kept there in future. This gentleman says, "that as an old agriculturist, he is inclined to think that less rain falls in the interior of Ireland than in any of the British isles, and yet, perhaps, there are more wet days there than in the former. The earth is kept longer moist without heavy rains, and this is better suited to the soil, the substratum being generally argillaceous rock, or calcareous stone, covered more or less by a fine hasel mould, capable of the highest improvement for grass, corn, and potatoes, as well as various other productions. No country, perhaps, is more calculated for the breeding and rearing of cattle and sheep than the south of Ireland, since it is exempted from the extremes either of cold or of heat. In general cattle are never housed, and though they lose much of their flesh during the severe weather, they become fat on the summer grass before the succeeding winter.” Dr. Smith, in his Civil and Natural History of Cork, remarks, that it appears from a regular diary of the weather, kept for several years in the city,+ that the winds blow from the south to the north-west three-fourths of the year at least. The greatest height to which the mercury in the barometer had ascended in the course of thirteen years was 30'4 inches, but it attained to this height only once; its lowest height was 28.2 inches. In the Doctor's time it often rose to 30 inches, and frequently fell to 28.6, and this seems to have been its utmost range. * Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Waterford, by Charles Smith, M.D. p. 284. + By Dr. Timothy Tuckey. The quantity of Rain which fell at Cork is stated to have been: For the purpose of comparison, Dr. Smith gives the following table of the quantity of rain which fell a few years before, at London, Padua, and Edinburgh, collected from the Philosophical Transactions. Some peculiarities, in regard to the state of the air and the weather, have been observed in this county at different periods. In the winter of 1695, and a considerable part of the following spring, there fell in several places a kind of thick dew, which the people called butter, on account of its yellow colour and of its consistence, being soft and clammy.* It fell always in the night, and chiefly in marshy low grounds, on the top of the grass, and on the thatch of the cabins, but seldom twice in the same spot. It commonly lay a fortnight without changing its colour, but after that time it dried and became black. Cattle fed as readily where it lay as in other places. It often fell in lumps as big as the end of the finger, thin, and in a scattered manner. It emitted a strong and disagreeable smell, similar in some degree to that which arises from church-yards and graves. During the greater part of the season, when this fetid dew fell, there were stinking fogs, which it is supposed might have produced it. In the summer of 1748, a shower of a yellowish substance, resembling brimstone, fell in and about the town of Doneraile. It emitted a sulphureous smell, and as it lay but thin on the ground it soon dissolved. * An account of it by Dr. St. George Ash, then Bishop of Cloyne, was printed in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 220, p. 223. Lightning sometimes has produced in this country very extraordinary effects; about fourteen years before Dr. Smith wrote, a ship, riding at anchor in Bantry Bay, had her masts shivered in a strange manner by the electric fluid; part of them being twisted like a rope, while others were burned to a cinder. At the same time the external air became so rarified, that the hull burst asunder by the great pressure of the internal air against its sides. On another occasion, a small ship of war riding in the same bay had her masts shattered in the like manner; and the bodies of the crew of another vessel were marked with stars, similar to those formed by the cracks in a glass bottle. All these effects happened in winter, at a period when there were strong gales of westerly winds. On the 27th of January, 1747, one Robert Barry, a labouring man, being in bed with his wife and two children in a close room, the door of which, opposite to a chimney in an outer room, was shut, a flash of lightning broke down some part of the top of the chimney, and split the chamber door, forcing one half of it into the room where the people lay. The man had his breast scorched, and a small streak was marked from his shoulder to his stomach. The woman had that side of her face on which she lay very much scorched and swelled; the daughter's hair was burnt close to her temples, and the boy was scorched on the back part of the neck. The lightning forced its way through the wall behind the fire-place, making a hole, which was larger on the outside of the house, than within. A pig was found dead near the chimney. The people being asleep did not hear the thunder, though there were very loud claps, and the man said that when he awoke he found a stone on his breast. On the night of the 10th of January, 1749, a flash of lightning passed through the county, in a direct line from west to east, and after killing some cows to the south of Cork, struck the round tower of the cathedral of Cloyne. It first rent the vaulted arch at the top, tumbled down the great bell, together with three galleries; and passing perpendicularly to the floor, which is about eight feet higher than the exterior foundation, forced its way with a violent explosion through one side of the tower, and drove the stones, which were admirably well joined, through the roof of a neighbouring stable. The door, though secured by a strong iron lock, was thrown to the distance of above sixty yards, and shattered to pieces. A few pigeons that frequented the top of the steeple were scorched to death, not a feather of them being left unsinged. On the 14th of June, 1748, about four o'clock in the afternoon, there was one of the most violent showers of hail ever remembered in that part of the country. It was attended with thunder and lightning, and continued above a quarter of an hour. Several of the hail-stones measured five inches square, and others had projecting from them, five or six points, each about an inch in length. They broke several windows and did considerable damage in and about Cork.* Dr. Smith speaks of a tract, entitled Medicina Statica Hibernica, or Statical Experiments, to examine and discover the insensible perspiration of the human body, in the South of Ireland, made. for a year and some months, by Colonel Rye, printed in 1734. This tract contains tables of the state of the air and weather, together with that of the barometer and thermometer; but I have never had an opportunity of seeing it. + As heat and cold, as well as other things belonging to climate, are relative, the inhabitants of a country cannot form a just estimate of that in which they live, unless they compare it with those of others. A comparison of this kind, combined with a survey of the vegetable productions in each, may furnish many useful hints in regard to agriculture, planting, and the rearing of exotics; and the philosopher, by examining the situations and natural state of the countries compared, may be able to ascertain the causes of some phenomena, for which it would otherwise be difficult to account. But meteorologic information lies so scattered, that it requires much trouble to collect it. I shall therefore here subjoin a few general notices on that subject, respecting different parts of the earth where observations have been made, extracted from the best authorities. Mean height of the barometer at different places, from Erxcleben and others. Height, once observed at Middlewich§ 31.00 Mr. Kirwan says, that the deviations of the mercury in the barometer, from its |