10 CLIMATE AND RESOURCES OF 



bined with a high temperature of the surrounding air, as we 

 find that during the hot weather, when Europeans cannot 

 expose themselves to the sun without imminent danger of 

 sunstroke in the plains, they can and do in the hills (where 

 the direct rays of the sun are actually hotter, from the more 

 rarefied state of the air, than in the plains) expose themselves 

 and take violent exercise, play at cricket, &c., with perfect 

 impunity, because the surrounding air is cooler. 



Heat apoplexy appears to be suffocation from excessive 

 heat. The cases of it mostly occur in the evening, often after 

 sunset. It is hardly known in Southern India and Bengal, 

 and is most prevalent in the hottest and driest parts of Upper 

 India. Deaths from this cause are steadily increasing. The 

 natives say it was almost unknown amongst them in Rohil- 

 cund some years ago, but now numerous deaths occur from it 

 there. These deaths being due to great heat, the increased 

 number of deaths from this cause may be taken as another 

 circumstance showing that the heat of the climate has in- 

 creased. 



During the hot weather numbers of cattle die of starvation, 

 finding hardly any herbage to eat, or are reduced to little 

 more than skeletons, and feed chiefly on the leaves of trees, 

 which they crop from the lower branches within their reach, 

 or are broken from the higher branches, and thrown down to 

 them by their attendants. The trees themselves suffer : their 

 growth is arrested, the leaves wither and fall, and in a season 

 hotter than usual the bark shrivels and cracks in all directions, 

 from the intense heat and dryness of the air, as if scorched 

 by fire, and the trees dry up and die. 



This is no exaggerated picture. I saw numbers of trees of 

 as much as one to two feet in diameter, which were killed in 

 this way by heat, in 1868 and 1869, in the Budaon district, 

 and many more trees which lost large branches, killed by the 



