1884.] Himalaya Snowfall with Drought in India. 7 



regular rains, and is followed by a fortnight or more of dry hot 

 weather. On the hills, as occurred in the present year (1883), it 

 frequently takes the form of snow on the higher ranges, and when 

 very copious is rather prejudicial to the monsoon rains. 



In the following table, therefore, I have taken as representing the 

 winter and spring rainfall, the total from January to May inclusive 

 at twelve stations, either on the Himalaya or situated immediately at 

 its foot. The table gives the annual precipitation since 1864 (as far 

 as it is on record) in the form of percentages of the local averages for 

 the same season, and the last line but one is the means of the figures 

 in each column. The last line shows the subsequent summer rain- 

 fall of the North-Western Provinces, also in the form of a percentage 

 of the general average of that season ; the figures up to 1878 being 

 taken from Mr. Hill's memoir. 



As might have been anticipated from the stricter character of the 

 test now applied, the results shown in the above table are even more 

 favour-able to the hypothesis than those educed by Mr. Hill. Of the 

 eighteen years enumerated in the table, fourteen give confirmatory 

 and only four adverse evidence. And of these four years, one (1876) 

 is that the conditions of which originally suggested the hypothesis as 

 already recounted above, and another (1880) apparently the most 

 discrepant of all, I shall presently refer to, as affording in the very 

 anomalies two of the most striking illustrative instances of its 

 validity. The remaining two exceptional years, 1866 and 1872, I 

 have no means of satisfactorily investigating. 



The year of the heaviest winter and spring rains, shown in the 

 table (1877), is that already referred to as one of an almost unpre- 

 cedentedly heavy snowfall in the Himalaya, and it is also that of the 

 smallest summer rainfall of the eighteen years. The two years which 

 come, next in order of winter raininess, viz., 1878 and 1865, had 

 comparatively but a small deficiency of the summer rainfall. But it 

 is certain that the Himalayan snowfall in the early months of 1878 

 was far from being comparable with that of the previous winter. 

 Nevertheless, the rains were much retarded, so much so, as to give 

 rise to serious anxiety. In the North-Western Provinces there was 

 scarcely any heavy rain before the 6th or 7th of July, and after a 

 few day's fall, a break set in which lasted up to the end of the month.* 



The experience of this year, and also that of 1876, and, as will 

 presently be shown, that of 1880, proves then, that the copiousness of 

 the winter and spring rainfall on the outer Himalaya is by no means 

 an exact criterion of that of the snowfall on the higher ranges ; and 

 it is only appealed to in evidence, in the absence of any regular 

 reports on the snows, with which we are more immediately concerned. 

 But apart from this consideration, I may here observe, that there was 

 * See Keport on the Meteorology of 1878, pp. 135-137. 



