▼OL. LXV,] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 633 



June the weather is very hot. At Allahabad and the upper country the rains 

 are not expected till the 20th of June, and seldom exceed the 30th, excepting 

 in extraordinary seasons, when it has been known to keep off till the 5th of 

 July ; but such an event is usually attended with a great mortality both of men 

 and beasts. They break up about the middle of Sept. and from this time to the 

 beginning of Jan. it continues fair cold weather. In Jan. there are almost 

 always a few days rain, seldom more than a week, and that gentle and pleasant, 

 which is productive of a 2d crop, which they usually reap. The winds at 

 Allahabad set in easterly from the beginning of the rains, and blow almost con- 

 stantly from that quarter till the conclusion of the cold weather in March, when 

 it changes more northerly, and is attended by violent north-west squalls of 

 thunder, lightning, rain, and hail, at which time it changes to the west, blow- 

 ing with violence, and a heat which frequently destroys the birds and beasts in 

 the fields, till the rain affords a relief. The river Ganges begins to swell before 

 the commencement of the rains, reported by the natives to proceed from the 

 melting of the snow on the northern mountains during the heats of May and 

 June. But the sudden rise of the waters in the Ganges, a few days after the 

 setting in of the rains, is almost incredible ; since it has been known to rise 

 20 feet in 48 hours; and its sudden fall is as extraordinary. In Bengal the 

 rivers are of course affected by the rise and fall of the Ganges. Floods continue 

 the whole time of the rains, more or less ; but the greatest overflowings are 

 generally at the beginning and the end or the breaking up of the rains, at 

 which period it rains with the greatest violence. The waters at Allahabad, and 

 in all the upper countries, run off into the rivers as soon as the rain has ceased, 

 the soil being for the most part of sand, and the country intersected with small 

 rivulets ; but in Bengal, and particularly so low down as Calcutta, being of a 

 clay soil and an extensive flat, the whole country is overflowed, forming lakes of 

 great extent, some of them being 6 miles over. The water therefore generally 

 remains till the sun has exhaled it, by which it becomes putrid, and renders those 

 parts extremely unwholesome, occasioning those deadly putrid fevers, which 

 carry off the patient in a few hours, known by the name of pucker fevers. 



XVI. A 2d Essm/ on the Natural History of the Sea Anemonies. By the 

 Abbe Dicquemare. Translated from the French, p. 207- 



I was concluding my essay on the sea anemonies, says Mr. D., inserted in the 

 63d volume of the Philos. Trans., [page 46o, of this abridged volume,] when I 

 discovered a 4th species of that animal ; and I have reason to think that I have 

 since observed a 5th species. New observations have increased the number of 

 my experiments : my ideas have been enlarged, ^ my views extended; and the 

 phenomena crowd in so fast upon me, that I dare not flatter myself with the 



YOL. xiii. 4 M 



