the other, be sure that the watchers have snared their prey, and that the ruin of the simple one is being accomplished.

The breakfast itself is a fine opportunity for studying human nature in what is supposed to be one of its most repellent phases. Many yield to the persuasive words which are addressed to them; some even accept the Gospel as unreservedly as it was accepted by the thief on the cross, and become very genuine cases of reformation.

It is not at these repasts, however, that the main work which is being carried on day by day, and from the opening to the end of the year, can be witnessed. To see that, we have to attend at the station in Brooke Street, Holborn, on any day at noon. There, in the very thoroughfare in which the despairing Chatterton cut short his young life nearly a century and a quarter ago, a house of industry is provided for quondam thieves who desire to work; and such have their passage paid to the colonies, have assistance rendered by grants of money or tools, or they are sent into situations at home as fast as openings can be found for them. To remain for an hour in the office or audience-chamber, is to come into close contact with a strange succession of unhappy persons, who are living illustrations of the truth of Solomon's dictum, "The way of transgressors is hard." Those who chiefly awaken sympathy are the suppliant weeping women, who come on behalf of fallen husbands. Some belong to the common street waif-and-stray class, who having stolen to satisfy hunger, found in the gaol a far more luxurious lodging than any to which they had been accustomed in their wanderings, and who frequently turn out well when a helping hand is held out to them. Those who are the most difficult to deal with are the clerks and warehousemen, who for the sake of petty pilfering or of securing a dishonest haul, have forfeited good situations, and who now, in a brokenhearted condition, apply for the assistance which will enable them to make a fresh start in life.

The magnitude of the work thus carried on at the Brooke Street station of the Mission may be inferred from the following figures. During the year ending November 30th, 1886, the number discharged from the prisons of Pentonville, Holloway, Wandsworth, and Millbank, was 20,524. As many as 14,261 of these accepted the invitation to breakfast given at the gates; 4,671 signed

the temperance pledge; and 5,751 were assisted in various ways to regain a creditable position in the world. Thus, 4,828 received money, clothes, tools, stock, &c.; 208 were sent home to their friends; 91 went to the colonies; 61 took to a seafaring life; and 489 had employment found for them at home. In addition to this, 713 convicts hadtheir gratuities, amounting to more than £3,000, paid to them through the Mission, and a large number of these cases received additional grants from the Mission funds.

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If it be asked, "What comes of all these efforts put forth daily on behalf of thieves year after year?" the answer is, A general diminution of crime, so far as Great Britain is concerned, which is without parallel in our own annals or in the history of the world, and which renders our situation unique among the nations." The experience of the United States, for example, is quite the reverse of our own; for in the Princeton Review for January of the present year, Mr. C. D. Warner, in speaking on behalf of the Republic, shows "that crimes rather increase than diminish, that the number of criminals in penitentiaries more than keeps pace with the growth of population and of wealth, so that enlarged accommodation for both old and juvenile offenders are continually demanded, and that what is known as the criminal class is larger year by year."

In England and Wales, during 1885, the number of penal servitude sentences was 1,027, being 23 per cent. lower than the year preceding, although 1884 was lower than any other year on record; compared with twenty years before the total was only one-half. Less than thirty years ago about 7,448 of the population provided one case of penal servitude yearly on the average, but at present the average is one in 28,724. This continuous decrease has been more particularly striking during the last ten years.

In such facts and figures as these, those who are actively engaged in the work of reclamation may well find incentives to perseverance, while the public at large will find in them reasons for not withholding from the St. Giles's Mission such pecuniary assistance as their labours require. Their successful service is necessarily a comparatively costly work; but when the vast saving in taxes as well as in plunder is taken into account, the public only advances its own interests by taking care that such a work does not flag for want of means wherewith to carry it on.

G. HOLDEN PIKE.

SECTION I-FURTHER NOTES ON THE ADELAIDE PLAINS.

BEFORE giving an account of experiences

at Mount Lofty I have yet more remarks touching the climatology and natural features of the Adelaide Plains, and my work at the Torrens Observatory. My hours of observation are 3 A.M., 9 A.M., 3 P.M., and 9 P.M.; also at 9.22 P.M., when it is eight minutes past noon in London, at which time synchronous readings are taken at the chief observatories of the world. At these times all the usual elements are observed in strict accordance with the principles and rules of the Royal Meteorological Society.

I am overwhelmed with the mass of material before me, and notwithstanding some little detail this article can only be a mere sketch in outline.

Imprimis, the weather of South Australia comes under the same classes as in Great Britain the cyclonic or low-pressure, and the anticyclonic or high-pressure type. The main difference is in the circulation of the winds, as set forth in Buy's Ballots' famous law for the southern hemisphere, "Stand with your back to the wind and the barometer is lower on the right hand than on the left." In these southern latitudes the wind circulates in the same direction as the hands of a watch around travelling barometric depressions, and against watch-hands around regions of high pressure. In the northern hemisphere it is the reverse. Each half, and indeed each quadrant, of a cyclonic depression has its own peculiar weather, depending, moreover, on the surrounding distribution of pressure. Instead, therefore, of the cloudy, saturated conditions which prevail in England with south-easterly winds, as the front part of a storm-area approaches on the plains of Adelaide a depression is heralded by north-east currents; and a glance at the map and configuration of the Australian continent will show the reader that, in the summer time, this wind must be intensely hot and dry. These low pressures travel from the west, and frequently originate in the South Indian Ocean. They skirt the Great Bight, and, overlapping the coast-line, usually pass with their centres to the south of Ade

laide. Thus the heated air from the interior must be drawn towards the place of lowest barometer.

A few figures from my own observatory will show the very remarkable variations in meteorological conditions between the front and receding portions of such a disturbance, and British workers will agree that the statistics are perhaps without precedent. Remember that the dry bulb thermometer indicates the temperature of the air in the shade, and the wet bulb gives the temperature of evaporation. Heat is lost by the evaporating process, and so when the air is not soaked with moisture the wet bulb reads lower than the dry bulb. Hence the greater the difference between the readings of the two instruments the drier is the atmo sphere, and when they both read alike, as was nearly always the case on Ben Nevis, the air is saturated, and such a condition is represented by 100. So, then, the percentage of relative humidity shows the degree of approach to absolute saturation.

On January 13th, 1884, for instance, a disturbance was coming from the west, and the barometer falling. The dry bulb at 9 A.M. read 96°5, wet bulb 74°4, giving a humidity of 24 per cent. The sky was deep blue, and a few whisps of cirrus cloud, which faithfully predict a coming change, were noted. The wind was north-east, sweeping round the south-eastern edge of the advancing depression at a velocity of about twenty-five miles an hour. As the centre approached the wind veered round by north, and at 3 P.M. the dry bulb was 106° 8, wet 69°4. Here we have a difference of more than thirty-seven degrees between the two thermometers, a difference which gives only 10 per cent.+ for the humidity of the air instead of 98 per cent., as is frequent in Great Britain in front of an advancing storm. The maximum shade temperature was 109° 2, the highest in the sun's rays 154°8 (by the same solar thermometer that a while ago was buried in ice on Ben Nevis), and the temperature of the ground at a depth of one foot was actually 91°2 at

9 P.M. Soon after midnight the centre of disturbance passed by, up went the barometer, and a new set of conditions became established to the relief of every one, so that by next evening temperature had fallen fortyone degrees and humidity increased to 63 per cent., under the cooling south-south-west winds travelling round the rear of the retreating depression.

Can British readers, hugging their fires in January, realise such conditions as the above at the antipodes? Once experience a genuine South Australian "brick-fielder," and you will never forget it. Tender vegetation withers as by frost in the old country-all nature seems prostrate. Ants, guided by wondrous instinct, find the wet-bulb thermometer, and eagerly sip the cooling moisture; and if I do not replenish the little water-cup even this will be denied them, for evaporation is proceeding at such a rapid rate that it will speedily run dry. My old cat lies panting in the shade, and wonders to what strange land she has been transported. Yesterday she was hunting native lizards in the sections yonder, but no Australian game tempts her now. I think of "Renzo," poor dog, in quarantine, and wonder how he takes to a colonial summer. Fowls are gasping under the trees, while ducks and geese hobble with pain as they tread the burning ground. Apples are roasting by the sun's rays.

Another disturbance followed this memorable instance five days afterwards. Again the wind went to the scorching north-east, and from a temperature of 84°·0 at 9 P.M. in front of the centre when the sky was clear, the thermometer fell to 59°9 in the rear, and the values for humidity were 20 per cent. and 85 per cent. respectively. The latter was obtained under strong south-west winds following violent dust-storms, and before heavy rain. The extreme rear of this depression brought lowering skies and gales, with great rolls of cloud capping the Mount Lofty range, so presenting a scene strongly resembling the Highlands. By January 20th the dry bulb was down to 52°9, and nearly half an inch of rain had fallen. At night there were breaks in the cloud-masses, and ever and anon one glimpsed the Southern Cross shining in the south-east like some sparkling jewel. Thus within a week I registered a range of temperature of more than fifty-six degrees.

So much for two instances of the Adelaide climate in January, and readers will concur that the meteorologist has ample scope for investigation. Such sudden and startling

changes, despite the salubrity of the climate, are trying to many people, and we are thankful that they occur mainly during summer. They are then a result of cyclonic winds drawn from the heated plains of Central Australia, and then veering into cool currents from the Southern Ocean, similarly drawn towards the centre of a low-pressure system; and never was the cyclonic theory better exemplified.

It will readily be understood that the anticyclonic type of weather seldom or never develops great energy between November and March, in consequence of the rarefied air rising from the hot interior.*

Gay as the gardens may be with the choicest flowers, maintained by irrigation with the hose from the water-mains, vegetable growth, with some exceptions, is checked during this season. Yet the stinkwort (Inula suaveolens), a noxious weed, native to South Europe, grows but too vigorously and flowers in profusion. The couchgrass and the beautiful buffalo grass-the latter introduced from the United Statesalso grow during summer, and are much used in forming lawns. But the slopes and plains are browned over, and so dry is vegetation, that a piece of glass focusing the sun's rays may set it ablaze. Bush fires rage in the hills despite stringent measures against the careless use of "Tandstickor" matches by reckless smokers, and shed a wild glow, beneath great volumes of smoke, on the flats by night.

It is not until the rains in March and April that growth is stimulated and “feed” appears, so that the South Australian autumn in a measure answers to the English spring; save, indeed, that deciduous trees introduced from Europe are turning yellow and dropping their leaves, and the foliage of the vineyards soon becomes a rich red-brown glorious to behold.

The weather thenceforth to the end of November is generally delightful, especially the early morning in May and June. The native "magpie" + pipes a warbling tune, one of the first signs of the return of day, cocks are crowing, soon we hear the ring of the hammer at the smithy yonder, and so genial is the air that on May 30th (corresponding with November 30th at home), I have noted a temperature of 66°2 at nine A.M. The sky is an Italian blue, dotted with cumuli, at times touching Mount Lofty, or flecked by cloud-masses behind a disturb

* Mean pressure at Alice Springs, in Central Australia, during January is 29° 9, and during July 30° 5.

+ This bird is the Piping Crow-Shrike, Gymnorhina libicen.