140 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



A study of the rainfall is one of the first 

 duties of a civilized government in India. India 

 and Vayu, the Watery Atmosphere and the Wind, 

 are still the prime dispensers of weal or woe to 

 the Indian races. . Hundreds of thousands of 

 lives lie every year at the mercy of the rainfall. 

 The population is a constant (or rather an increas- 

 ing) quantity, emigration on any adequate scale 

 being incompatible with the feelings of the peo- 

 ple. The area of tillage is also a constant quan- 

 tity throughout a great part of India, spare land 

 being no longer available. But whether the yield 

 of the one constant quantity will or will not suf- 

 fice for the necessities of the other, depends each 

 autumn on the rainfall — a quantity which has 

 hitherto been regarded as altogether inconstant 

 and beyond calculation. We believe that the sup- 

 posed inconstancy of the rainfall is simply the 

 measure not of its freedom from law, but of our 

 ignorance. We do not think it wise, from the 

 data here collected, to prophesy future famines at 

 Madras ; although five out of the six famine- 

 causing droughts of this century, since 1810, hap- 

 pened at Madras within the minimum group of 

 our cycle, and the sixth fell in that group together 

 with the year immediately preceding it. The 

 time for safe prediction has not yet come. But 

 we do think that the cyclic character of the Ma- 

 dras rainfall must henceforth enter into considera- 

 tions connected with the food-supply of the peo- 

 ple, and into arrangements for husbanding and 

 distributing the water-supply of Madras. The 

 problem is how best to conserve and utilize the 

 rainfall, not merely of the year, but of the cycle. 



Fortunately, while the study of the rainfall 

 forms a prime state duty in India, there is per- 

 haps no country in the world better suited than 

 India for meteorological research. If a meteo- 

 rologist were to sit down and construct a model 

 field for his inquiries, he would make a continent 

 stretching from near the equator up into the tem- 

 perate zone. He would cut off his field by a 

 great wall on the north, with smaller coast-walls 

 running down toward the southern extremity, and 

 with two distinct, regular, and well-ascertained sets 

 of winds playing from a vast expanse of ocean 

 upon each side. India is precisely such a model. 



If we are ever to reach the great laws which reg- 

 ulate the weather, it will be by combining mete- 

 orological observations with statistical inductions 

 in a country like that, where the general laws have 

 a sufficient space to produce general results, and 

 where the disturbing influences are regular and 

 well ascertained. The first step is to find the 

 quantitative value and variations of the several 

 factors of the Indian rainfall. Nothing will be 

 accomplished by jumbling together rain-returns 

 from unhomogeneous stations, at which, from 

 their situation and surroundings, the same factors 

 act in a totally dissimilar manner. Thus, if the 

 northeastern monsoon produces a periodicity in 

 the rainfall of Madras, where it contributes twenty- 

 nine inches of the total rainfall, there is no -cause 

 for surprise in not finding a similar periodicity 

 at Bclliiri or Hyderabad, where it only yields 

 three. The figures for which we have found 

 space in the foregoing pages establish the cycle 

 of rainfall at only two stations in India ; but they 

 are the stations for which returns exist for the 

 longest periods ; and at which the two great fac- 

 tors of the Indian rainfall can produce clearly- 

 marked effects. If, out of each thousand pounds 

 speut on famine-relief this year, ten shillings 

 were laid aside for an inquiry into the physical 

 laws of famine, we should await the next calam- 

 ity with a very different power of dealing with it. 

 The people of England, both now and beforetime, 

 have displayed a noble liberality to their suffer- 

 ing fello\v-subjects in the East. On the present 

 occasion, however, they have not only been lib- 

 eral of their money; they have disclosed an ear- 

 nestness to understand the real meaning of an 

 Indian famine, and to find out its causes and 

 its remedies. Splendid as have been their acts of 

 national sympathy and benevolence, this desire 

 to arrive at a truer understanding of the facts 

 will prove of not less service to the Indian races, 

 and of not less help and encouragement to those 

 on whom rests the anxious task of Indian admin- 

 istration. 



It may be that we have here another instance 

 of how a patient study of the abstract truths of 

 science is fruitful of practical benefits to man- 

 kind. — Nineteenth Century. 



