§700,701. MONSOONS. 373 



lasts n week or two, the fiends of the storm hold their terrific 

 sway in these bands. The changing of the monsoons is marked 

 by storm and tempest. Becalmed in them, meanings are said 

 by seamen to be heard in the air — a sign of the coming storm — 

 a warning of impending danger to ship and crew. Then the 

 props and stays are taken away from the air, and the wind seems 

 ready to rush violently hither and thither, and whenever there is 

 from any cause a momentary disturbance of the equilibrium. In 

 such an atmosphere, the latent heat that is liberated by every 

 heavy rain-shower has power to brew a storm. Throughout the 

 monsoon region, the people know beforehand, almost to a day, 

 the coming of this interregnum, which they call the changing of 

 the monsoons, for the annual changing at the same place is verj^ 

 regular. 



700. Theory, therefore, points to a place in Northern India, 

 How the calm belt of which is ucar the northern limits of the southwest 



Cancer is pushed to ^ ^ i • i /» i i 



the north. mousoon, whcrc the mean height of the barometer 



during the rainy season (§ 691) is about 29.5 inches, the mean 

 height at the equator being 29.92 inches. Into this monsoon place 

 of low barometer over the land the wind rushes from the north- 

 east as well as the southwest. The place of high pressure toward 

 the north from which it rushes is under the calm belt of Cancer. 

 Hence this belt is also pushed north, and made to occupy, in sum- 

 mer at least, the position over land somewhat like that assigned 

 to it on Plate YIII. In the southwest monsoon the Malabar 

 coast has its rainy season, so that the air over the peninsula is 

 permanently kept more or less in a rarefied state, as actual obser- 

 vations abundantly show. 



701. The equatorial calm belt in the Indian Ocean is a de- 

 The cur^•ed form of cidcd curvc. The pcculiaT form may be ascribed 

 beuTlheindt™ to the mctcorological influence of the Indian pen- 

 ^^^°" insula upon the calm belt, and in this way : The 

 northeast monsoon brings the rainy season to the Coromandel 

 coast and to the east coast of Ceylon. This rainy season em- 

 braces the land rather than the sea. The latent heat that is lib- 

 erated during these rains, together with the effect of the solar ray 

 upon this tongue of land, has the effect of expanding the air over 

 it, and so deadening the northeast monsoon. In the mean time, 

 the meteorological influences from Africa on one side, and Aus- 



