TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION A. 455 
use them. Indications of a growing belief in the utility and value of this feature 
of the work of the Department by the people in different parts of India are not 
wanting. 
The Government of India have sanctioned large changes in its Meteorological 
Department in order to enable it to carry out the extensions of work that recent 
experience has shown to be desirable. The Department is kept in touch with 
scientific opinion and judgment at home through the Observatories Committee of 
the Royal Society. ‘The relations to other scientific departments in India are 
maintained by a special committee termed the Board of Scientific Advice. The 
scientific staff has been largely increased. The solar physics observatory at 
Kodaikanal and the magnetic observatory at Bombay have been placed under the 
Meteorological Department with a view to the complete co-ordination of the depart- 
ments of scientific investigation for which they are maintained. Observational data 
for the whole Indo-oceanic area are now being collected and tabulated with a view to 
the early publication of daily and monthly weather reports and charts of that area. 
The objects of this last extension have already been indicated. It will afford 
the Indian meteorologists the data necessary for the investigation of the extension 
and intensity of the more important variations in the meteorology of the whole 
region, to correlate the abnormal features in the atmospheric circulation over the 
area, and more especially to ascertain the causes of the occasional failure of the 
monsoon rains in India. Finally, it will, it is hoped, enable the Department to 
collect the information and acquire the additional experience necessary in order to 
render the seasonal forecasts more reliable and satisfactory than they have been 
during the past six or seven years, 
The area to be dealt with (viz., the Indo-oceanic area) is partially covered by 
a number of independent meteorological systems, including those of Egypt, East, 
Central, and South Africa, Ceylon, Mauritius, the Straits Settlements, and 
Australia. Large areas, as, for example, Arabia, Persia, Afghanistan, Thibet, and 
the greater number of the islands of the Indian Ocean, are now almost completely 
unrepresented. 
The departments controlling these systems work independently of each other, 
chiefly for local objects, and are in no way officially correlated or affiliated. Their 
methods of observation and of discussion and publication of meteorological data 
differ largely. It is hence difficult, if not almost impossible, to make satisfactory 
comparisons of the data, and trace out for the work of current meteorology the 
extension or field of similar variations, their relations to each other, and their 
probable influence on the future weather. 
The work which should be carried out in order that the investigation of the 
meteorology of the Indo-oceanic area might he effective and as complete as possible 
includes the following : — 
(1) The extension of the field of observation by the establishment of observa- 
tories in unrepresented areas, and the systematic collection of marine meteorological 
data for the oceanic area. 
(2) The collection and tabulation of the data necessary to give an adequate 
view of the larger abnormal features of the meteorology of the whole area. 
(3) The direction by some authoritative body of the registration, collection, 
and tabulation of observations by similar methods in order to furnish strictly 
comparable data for discussion. 
(4) The preparation of summaries of data required as preliminary to the work 
of discussion, and for the information of the officers controlling the work of 
observation in the contributory areas. The earliest publication of the data should 
be regarded as essential for the use of officers issuing seasonal forecasts. 
(5) The scientific discussion of all the larger abnormal features in any consider- 
able part of the area and their correlation to corresponding or compensatory 
variations in the remainder of the area by a central office furnished with an 
adequate staff. 
(6) Possibly, sufficient authority on the part of the central office to initiate 
special observations required for the elucidation of special features for which there 
are no arrangements in the general work of the various systems. 
