1881.] 



and rainfall to temperature in India. 



71 



temperature of the year was slightly excessive ; and in the Punjab, this 

 was the case at as many stations as showed the opposite variation. This 

 excess was due to the preponderance of the high temperatures of the first 

 five months, which were not quite compensated by the dejn-ession of tem- 

 perature which prevailed during the rains, and, more or less generally, in 

 the later months of the year. In the Central Provinces, however, and 

 Rajputana, the great depression of the closing months of th%year more 

 than counterbalanced the excess of the earlier months ; and in the Dakhan 

 and the Peninsula generally, a depression of temperature characterised the 

 greater part of the year. In Burma and Arakan, only the first three months 

 of the year showed an excess of temperature ; that of the remainder of the 

 year being rather below the average. 



Thus the progressive increase of the average temperature of India, 

 which, as was shown in the Meteorological report for 1878, had been in 

 progress during the four years 1875-78, reached its climax in the last of 

 these years, and has been followed by a considerable fall. The mean ano- 

 malies of the five years are as follows : — 



Number of Stations 

 Mean anomaly- 

 Progressive variation 



1875. 



1876. 



1877. 



1878. 



72 



72 



74 



74 



— 0-29° 



+ 0-08° 



+ 0-17° 



+ 0-62° 



•• 



+ 21 



+ 0-25 



+ 0-45 



1879. 



70 

 —013° 

 —0-75 



The result, therefore confirms the conclusion which I drew in the 

 Meteorological report of 1878, and shows that the variation is not apparent 

 only and due to any progressive change in the instruments employed. So 

 far, it coincides with that found by Gautier and Koppen for land stations 

 in the tropics generally ; since the maximum coincides, approximately, with 

 the recent minimum of sun-spots. 



A recent notice by Dr. Koppen, in the July number of the Journal of 

 the Austrian Meteorological Society, gives some highly interesting data 

 of the temperature anomalies of large land areas of the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere, during the last five years ; which indicate that the oscillation of 

 temperature, shown above, was not restricted to India, but was shared by 

 a large portion of Europe and North and Central America. The data are 

 reproduced in the following table, in which the temperature anomalies are 

 reduced from Dr. Koppen's table, to their corresponding values in Fahren- 

 heit degrees : — 



