1890.] Address. 91 



His experience soon showed him that the system of independent pro- 

 vincial Meteorological Departments was veiy unscientific and that rapid 

 progress in the investigation of the Meteorology of India could only be 

 made by combining the provincial departments into a single system. 

 In that way only could the Meteorology of India be dealt with and 

 studied as a whole. His efforts in this direction finally brought forth 

 fruit. In 1875, he was asked by the Government of India to report 

 upon the provincial systems and to propose a scheme for their unifi- 

 cation and the establishment of a Meteorological Department for the 

 whole of India. He submitted the report called for, in July 1875, and 

 the scheme he projiosed was adopted. He was appointed Meteoro- 

 logical Reporter to the Government of India, in order that the scheme 

 he proposed might be carried out, and the objects realized in the most 

 effective manner. From that time to the date of his retirement he 

 laboured most earnestly and energetically to realize his idea of a tho- 

 roughly efficient department which should deal with the Meteorology of 

 India from a practical as well as a scientific stand-point. The storm- 

 signal duties of the department were rapidly extended and before the 

 termination of his service, a system was in force for warning all the 

 more important ports of the Empire. Daily reports for the whole of 

 India, similar to those published by Meteorological Bureaus in Europe, 

 are, as a result of his labours, issued at Simla, and local reijorts at 

 Calcutta and Bombay, to give early weather information to the mercan- 

 tile and seafaring communities of these two ports. A valuable series 

 of annual reports dealing with the Meteorology of India as a whole, and 

 of monographs on various Indian Meteorological subjects, in the " Indian 

 Meteorological Memoirs,'^ have been published during this period. Pro- 

 bably the most valuable of all is the monograph on the " Rainfall of 

 India," based on the whole of the available information up to date. 

 Since his retirement he has written a very valuable jiopular treatise on 

 the " Climates and weather of India." It is based on the whole of the 

 materials and researches of the department to the time of his retirement. 

 It is not only very interesting reading, but gives later and more complete 

 information on Indian Meteorology than is to be found elsewhere. It 

 . will, it is to be hoped, awake a livelier interest in the pi'oblems of Indian 

 Meteorology amongst European meteorologists and induce them to assist 

 investigations. The number of scientific meteorologists engaged in the 

 investigation of the problems of the weather of Western Europe (no 

 larger than India) are to be numbered probably by hundreds, whilst 

 it is doubtful whether there are as many as a dozen who devote them- 

 selves to the elucidation of the meteorological problems of India. 



An important feature of the work of the year 1889 in Meteorology 



