ADVENT OF THE TROPICAL RAINS. 249 



everybody who witnesses them for the first time, but 

 they have been so fully described in our chapter on 

 Climates and Temperatures, that it will be unnecessary 

 to enlarge upon them further in this respect. A good 

 idea, however, may be formed of the extreme violence 

 of the downpour which occasionally and indeed not 

 infrequently occurs, if we mention that in 1891, in 

 Bhownugger, in the Bombay Presidency, there occurred 

 an extraordinary rainfall of fifteen inches in twenty-four 

 hours. * It is perhaps difficult to realize all that that 

 tremendous deluge imports: but it is more than falls 

 in six months, during an average year, in the leading 

 agricultural districts of England, where the annual 

 rainfall is under thirty inches for the whole year, f 



In the zones of territory comprised within the Bush 

 Region, as a rule, the coming of the tropical rains 

 occurs with great regularity, so that their arrival can 

 generally be calculated within a few days; and inas- 

 much as the whole of the pastures and crops of these 

 lands depend upon these rains, it is impossible to overstate 

 their importance; especially in a thickly populated 

 country like British India, where it is stated, on the 

 highest authority, that seventy-two per cent of the 

 whole male population depend for their livelihood upon 

 agriculture. The failure of the monsoonal rains is thus 

 synonymous with famine, all over Hindostan. 



The water-bearing winds which convey these rains 

 that give life and fertility to our Indian Empire, are 

 undoubtedly the grandest examples of such phenomena 



* London Times of August 3, 1891. 



f Encycl. Brit. Qth edit., Vol. xvi, p. 114 Article "Meteorology." 



See The Imperial Gazetteer of India, by Sir William W. Hunter 



(Director-General of Statistics to the Government of India), 2nd edit., 



1885, Vol. vi, p. 482. 



