Temperature and Pressure

Abstract

The climate of the island of Jamaica is remarkably uniform, not only at the sea-level, but also at places having the same elevation, so that the connection between temperature and elevation, or barometrical pressure due to that elevation, is easily obtained; and since the surface of the island is broken up by innumerable radiating and intersecting mountain ranges, among or upon which the houses are scattered, this connection becomes one of the most important features in its meteorology; but what renders it especially interesting, however, is the fact that the rate of the decrease of temperature in ascending the hills in this tropical climate is equal to the average rate of decrease found by balloon ascents made in England, as far as the irregularities of the results obtained from those ascents will allow us to judge.