414 THYSIAL GEOGRAPHY OF THK SEA, AND ITS METEOROLOGY. 



month and from the course upon which he is about to make an 

 entry, he has ah-eady made four marks or scores, thus (////). 

 The one that he has now to enter will make the fifth, and ho 

 *' scores and tallies," and so on until all the abstracts relating to 

 that part of the ocean upon which he is at work have been gone 

 over, and his materials exhausted. These *' fives and tallies " 

 are exhibited on Plate V. Kow, with this explanation, it will 

 be seen that in the district marked A (Plate Y.) there have been 

 examined the logs of vessels that, giving the direction of the 

 wind for every eight hours, have altogether spent days enough 

 to enable me to record the calms and the prevailing direction of 

 the winds for eight hours, 2144 times : of these, 285 were for the 

 month of September ; and of these 285 observations for Septem- 

 ber, the wind is reported as prevailing for as much as eight 

 hours at a time : from N. 3 times ; from N.N.E., 1 ; N.E., 2 ; 

 E.N.E., 1; E., 0;E.S.E., 1; S.E., 4; S.S.E., 2;S., 25; 

 .S.S.W., 45; S.W., 93; W.S.W., 24; W., 47; W.N.AV., 17; 

 N.W., 15; N.N.W., 1 ; Calms (the little O's), 5; total 285 for 

 the month in this district. The number expressed in figures 

 denotes the whole number of observations of calms and winds 

 together that are recorded for each month and district. In C, 

 the wind in May sets one third of the time from w^est. But in 

 A, which is between the same parallels, the favourite quarter for 

 the same month is from S. to S.W., the wind setting one third 

 of the time from that quarter, and only 10 out of 221 times 

 from the west ; or, on the average, it bloM^s from the west only 

 IJ day during the month of May. In B, notice the great " sun 

 swing " of the winds in September, indicating that the change 

 from summer to winter, in that region, is sudden and violent ; 

 from winter to summer, gentle and gradual. In some districts of 

 the ocean, more than a thousand observations have been dis- 

 cussed for a single month, whereas, with regard to others, not a 

 single record is to be found in an}'- of the numerous log-books at 

 the National Observatory. 



782. Typhoons. — The China seas are celebrated for their 

 furious gales of wind, known among seamen as typhoons and 

 white squalls. The seas are included on the plate (VIII.) as 

 within the region of the monsoons of the Indian Ocean. But the 

 monsoons of the China Sea are not five month monsoons (§ 681) ; 

 they do not prevail from the west of south more than two or 

 three months. Plate V. exhibits the monsoons very clearly in a 



