50 



of rice. Pryapattana has therefore been termed the chosen 

 city of the natives of Karnata who suffer from scarcity of 

 rain." . . . '''■ Haltoray. Change of climate. The natives 

 say that formerly the rains were so copious that by means of 

 small tanks a great part of the country could be cultivated with 

 rice. These tanks were only sufficient to contain 8 or 10 days 

 water, and to supply the fields when such short intervals of fair 

 weather occurred. For 40 years past, however, a change having 

 taken place in the climate, no rice has been cultivated except 

 by means of large reservoirs." Buchanan adds " the truth of 

 this allegation is confirmed by the number of small tanks, the 

 ruins of which are now visible ; and by the plots of ground 

 levelled for rice which are near these tanks and which are now 

 quite waste." Possibly this was the result of the clearance of 

 forests which are stated to have some effect in regulating and 

 conserving local falls of rain but no influence in modifying the 

 general features of climate. Dr. Brandis, who might be ex- 

 pected to claim for forests all the merit they could justly lay 

 claim to, states : " There is no proof that forests modify the 

 climate to any great extent. The great features of climate 

 depend on cosmic causes, which are independent of local cir- 

 cumstances. Large extent of forests or large areas of irrigated 

 lands may, however, have some effect in increasing the rainfall 

 at certain seasons, and there is no doubt that in the vicinity 

 of dense forests and on irrigated lands, the air near the ground 

 is generally moister during the dry season and the dew 

 heavier." In the Goddvari district, where forests had been 

 extensively cleared in recent times, Mr. Henry Forbes, the Sub- 

 Collector, reported in 1848 that the forest had receded, but that 

 he thought it open to qaestion whether the diminution in the 

 streams which came from the hills was not in the time which 

 the stream took to exhaust itself, instead of in the body of 

 water passing down to its bed ; whether the rain was not said 

 to be less in quantity only because, falling on the hills and no 

 longer restrained by the trunks and roots of trees and allowed 

 no time to percolate through the soil and fissures of rocks and to 

 supply the reservoirs of springs, it poured down in torrents and 

 left the water-courses dry as soon as the rains had ceased to 

 fall. Moreover, the want of communications during the rainy 

 season, and the difficulty in crossing unbridged rivers, and the 

 liability of the country to inundations in past times were all 

 calculated to produce an exaggerated impression regarding the 

 quantity of rainfall. The accounts of famines in past centuries 

 given in the previous portion of this memorandum will show 

 that large portions of Southern India were liable to severe and 

 prolonged droughts quite as much in past times as at present. 



