Page:Notable South Australians.djvu/125

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OR, COLONISTS — PAST AND PRESENT.
97

property of the town and county of Stafford, Mr. Wragge being life trustee. It has been classified by him (on Cuvier's method, as regards the Zoological department), and he has illustrated Sir Chas. Lyell's "Students' Elements of Geology." The Ethnographical division he has arranged to illustrate ethnographically Mercator's Chart of the World. During his voyages he made numerous zoological and meteorological notes, and obtained valuable and curious results relative to ocean currents from his practice of casting adrift bottle-papers. For instance, in the case of Renners current, which sets from the Bay of Biscay to the Irish coast, his bottles, cast adrift at various positions and at different seasons, have invariably drifted to, and been' picked up on, the coast of France; seeming to indicate that Maury did not attach sufficient importance to the influence of the winds on current bottles. On the other hand, papers cast adrift by Mr. Wragge in the region of the Sargossa Sea have followed the current into the main equatorial stream, and been found at Hayti and on the northern shores of the Gulf of Mexico. After returning from his second visit to Australia, Mr. Wragge devoted his attention specially to meteorology, and established three observatories at different heights in the Churnet valley and moorlands of North Staffordshire, chiefly to investigate problems in climatology. Very valuable results were obtained as to the problem of the increase of temperature with altitude. One instance may be cited. During the famous frost of January, 1881, at his station on Beacon Stoop, 1,216 feet above sea temperature, at 9 a.m., it was 20·7; at his Farley observatory, on the watershed, 640 feet above the sea, 16·4; and at Oakamoor, in the valley, 350 feet above the sea, 3·6, simultaneously. In 1881 Mr. Wragge established and worked, mainly with his own instruments, under the auspices of the Scottish Meteorological Society, during summer and autumn, the first observatory on the summit of Ben Nevis, 4,406 feet high, and a station in connection at Fort William. There