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vol. 3). It was the outcome of the labour of several years. All the 

 available data were obtained and sifted to separate the doubtful from 

 the trustworthy. The result of this investigation was to give an 

 accurate knowledge of all the broader features of the distribution of 

 the rainfall of India, and of the chief causes or factors (physical and 

 topographical) determining the law of its distribution. 



After he retired on pension in 1889 he continued to devote himself 

 with unwearied zeal amidst failing health to the discussion of his 

 favourite meteorological problems. He undertook the discussion of 

 the series of hourly observations taken at about twenty-five stations 

 in India from 1876 to 1888. He completed the discussion of those 

 taken at Sibsagar, Dhubri, Goalpara, Hazaribagh, Patna, Roorkee, 

 and Allahabad, but was obliged to give up the work in the beginning 

 of 1892. It was his intention to have prepared separate statements 

 and brief discussions of the results for each station, and to have 

 followed this up with a general discussion of the whole of the results, 

 and it is greatly to be regretted in the interests of meteorological 

 science that he was not spared to complete this work on a subject to 

 which he had devoted especial attention, and which he was especially 

 qualified to investigate. 



He presented the chief results of his investigations and those of his 

 co-workers in India to the English public in 1889, shortly before his 

 death, in his ' Climates and Weather of India/ It is a valuable work 

 of local climatology, and presents all the more important results of 

 the work of the Meteorological Department during his regime in an 

 interesting form for English readers. 



It will thus be seen that his life was one of unwearied activity. 

 His powers of organisation were shown by the steady development of 

 the department which he established and initiated. He was a patient 

 and vigorous worker, and the results of his labours are shown as 

 much by the numerous short suggestive papers he contributed to 

 various Societies, &c., as by his larger monograph ' On the Rainfall 

 of India,' and the Annual Reports on the Meteorology of India. 

 His name will be associated with the commencement and develop- 

 ment of scientific meteorology in India, and the rapid growth of 

 the department under him is the best proof of his special qualifica- 

 tions as a meteorologist and of his zeal and untiring energy. Euro- 

 pean meteorologists recognised almost from the first the value of the 

 work done by the department under him ; it was his constant aim 

 to place his department upon as high a level for scientific and prac- 

 tical work in meteorology as similar departments in Europe and 

 America, and it is hardly too much to say that he fully succeeded. 



After he became engaged in the work of Indian meteorology, Mr. 

 Blanford's time was almost entirely occupied with that subject, 

 although he by no means lost his interest in geology and zoology. 



