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lightning. At io, " a very dreadful tempest, and lightning very severe." T h e rain continued over the following day (ist November) with a heavy thunderstorm. T h e thermometer was 93 at 12 o'clock, and down to 50 in the eve. December 21st, at 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 96, and 118 in the sun by the side of a marquee. 27th at 10 a.m. it yvas 96 in the shade. O n Christmas D a y thermometer 82 in the shade, and on the 29th it was 63 at 3 p.m. T h e Neyv Year was very changeable, and in January there were all sorts of yveather. O n 14th January in the afternoon the thermometer was 92 at 4 o'clock, and 76 at 6.30 o'clock, whilst the next day the rain, thunder and lightning were something terrific. T h e folloyving extra shows that the 18th of January, 1804, was quite a grilling day in the settlement:— "AVednesday, 1 8 t h . — A . M . — T h e day very fine. At 11 o'clock the thermometer stood at 82. At 1 p.m., thermometer, 92 in the shade, n o in the sun. At 1 p.m. the military assembled on the parade in their new clothes and fired three excellent volleys. At 3.45 p.m. a hut belonging to Lieutenant Johnson's, of the Royal Marines, took fire and burned down, yvith another of Lieutenant Lord's, and very near setting the marquee on fire. Observation of the thermometer taken by M r . Harris in his m a r q u e e : — 7 a.m, shade 68; 12 noon, shade 92, sun 117; 1.30 p.m., shade 97; 2 p.m. sun 127 2.15 p.m., shade 101, sun 130; 2.30 p.m., shade 102, sun 132; 3 p.m., shade 102, sun 120; 10 p.m., shade 83. This has been by far the hottest day since w e came to the camp." T h e convict colony passed ayvay, and the skies might smile or frown unwatched, and the sun sulk or burn as it liked for more than thirty years ; but that the thermometer yvas set experimentalizing soon after the permanent AVhite occupation of 1835-6 is conclusively established by the following quotation from Fawkner's M S S . newspaper, the Melbourne Advertiser of 15th January, 1838. "Meteorological.—Sunday, 14th January, at a quarter before 1 o'clock p.m., the thermometer in the shade stood at 102 ; at 1 p.m., fell to 78. Barometer at 8 a.m, was 29.89 ; at 1 p.m., 29.58 ; and at 8 p.m., 29.42. About midnight it came on to blow a violent northerly gale, which continued until 8 a.m." These are thefirstjournalistic readings of the kind extant, and they disclose the fact that in the management of his little " Foolscap Experiment," whatever other shortcomings were apparent, there can be no doubt that "Johnny" Fawkner, its redoubtable editor, had his "weather"-eye open. In 1839, Mr. James Smith, one of the primitive inhabitants, supplied the Port Phillip Gazette with what yvere technically termed " Meteorological Tables," but they were little more than a crudely cooked re-hash from the English almanacs, yvith scarcely any attempt at localization. T h e same journal issued a sheet almanac for the year, which yvas simply a bare calendar of the months, week and days, padded with a few items of general information useful for the time. In 1840 there yvas attached to the department of the Harbour Master an officer grandiloquently designated a " Meteorologist;" but his scientific services were not of m u c h value, if assessed in proportion to the scale of his emolument—namely, eighteenpence per day ! H e was a Mr. Phillip Hervey, an obliging, gentlemanly, bustling sort of old felloyv, domiciled in a small wooden tower on the Flagstaff Hill. Whatever spare hours he had were devoted to the compilation of brief calendar notices for the newspapers, and keeping his "sick-books" for Dr. Greeves, by which means he eked out a trifling addition to his one-andsixpenny yvage. A s for anything like systematic meteorological records, they yvere never kept in those days, and the rainfall was only casually noticed by the general wetness of a yvinter, or a rough guess as to the number of feet the Yarra rose in floodtime at the Melbourne Wharf or the Studley Park Falls, where trees were notched at the various high water marks. From an old journal of Hervey's, and other sources, supplementing it after his death, I have been enabled to ascertain the rainfall at Melbourne for the eleven years specified as under:—1840, 22.58 inches; 1841, 30.16 inches; 1842, 31.17 inches; 1843, 21.54 inches; 1844, 28.26 inches; 1845, 23.92 inches; 1846, 30.54 inches; 1847, 3°-^ inches; 1848, 33.15 inches; 1849, 44-23 inches; 1850, 26.99 inches. T h efirstpublished Meteorological S u m m a r y appears in Kerr's Melbourne Almanac for 1842, from which it seems that in 1841 the barometer mean of the year was 29.885, the thermometer 57.74, number of days with rain 98, and depth of rain 30.16. In the course of m y researches I have also picked up a few instances of the exceptional action of both thermometer and barometer, and I append them, pro tanto, in the promiscuous condition in which I found them.