THE HINDOO SEASONS. 251 



fields dry up; the crops ripen; and the harvest is 

 gathered in. 



Where there is a well-marked cool season, though 

 there may be no actual winter, it usually follows the 

 cessation of the rains. The rainy season has probably 

 been hot and steamy, because of the more or less ver- 

 tical sun, and the vapours exhaled by the heated 

 earth; then, as the sun passes into another hemisphere, 

 the evaporation of the superabundant moisture tempers 

 the sultry heats: for, as we know, the conversion of 

 water into vapour, by heat, is always accompanied by 

 the abstraction of caloric. * This evaporation, proceed- 

 ing upon a gigantic scale, therefore produces a more 

 or less well marked cool season ; and as the process 

 becomes complete the hot season again sets in. 



The seasons throughout the Great Bush Region are 

 therefore three in number the rainy, the cool, and 

 the hot season. The second of these gradually disap- 

 pears as we approach the Equatorial Zone, where 

 people generally reckon two seasons only the wet, 

 and the dry seasons which in their turn coalesce 

 into a single season within the region of perpetual 

 rains at the equator, where the climate remains almost 

 unchangeable throughout the year. The Hindoos, we 

 may here remark, divide their year into six seasons 

 or "Ritus": (i) Vasanda, or Spring; (2) Grishma, or 

 the Hot Season; (3) Varsha, or the Rains; (4) Sharada, 

 or the Autumn; (5) Hemanta, or the Winter; and 

 (6) Shishera, or the Cool Season, f 



* This is the secret of the refreshing coolness of the ocean breezes, 

 because the wind in its transit over the surface of the deep is continu- 

 ally evaporating and carrying off water in the form of vapour so when 

 they reach the coast these winds come in cool and invigorating. 



f Murray's Handbook for India and Ceylon, 1892, p. xliii of the In- 

 troduction. 



