The scaffolding in the foreground was erected for the purpose of lowering an earth thermometer into the ground. This instrument, which is constructed to register the temperature seventy feet below the surface, is contained in the wooden chamber standing at an angle to the scaffolding, and was photographed during the sinking process.
Besides the work of preparing weather reports and forecasts, the office fulfils many other functions, such as the study of ocean meteorology, climatology, and so forth. In connection with the former work, the office annually receives some hundreds of reports and observations from officers of ships of the Royal Navy and Mercantile Marine.
The fishermen and sailors round our coasts have much to thank the office for. Besides supplying all the ports with daily weather reports and forecasts, it has lent over 200 barometers to fishing villages and other places on the coast for the benefit of the seafaring population.
Fortunately in this country we suffer comparative immunity from tornados, sirrocos, cyclones, and other dangerous natural phenomena.
That we can produce something more ferocious than an April shower, however, is amply demonstrated by our illustration of two huge rents torn in a hillside at Langtoft, East Yorkshire, by the bursting of a waterspout.
Hailstorms are another great source of destruction. Most people will remember the damage caused by a hailstorm in Essex last year, when several farms and homesteads were utterly wrecked, and great numbers of cattle killed.
Many people who have not encountered the big hailstorm regard it with the cheerful scepticism with which they view the sea serpent and the abnormal gooseberry. However, by permission of the Royal Meteorological Society, we are enabled to reproduce a photograph of some of the hailstones—actual size—which fell in a great storm at York on July 8th, 1893, together with a section of corrugated iron, showing holes and damage caused by hailstones which fell in a similar storm at Tulcumbah, N.S.W., on Oct. 13th, 1892.
However, most people would rather lose a section of corrugated roofing than encounter the flash of lightning that struck the man whose clothes appear in the illustration on the next page. As will be seen, the clothes are literally shredded to rags, and the strong leather boots are torn as though they were tissue paper.
