JOURNAL 



OP THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL, 



Part II.— NATURAL SCIENCE. 

 No. I.— 1887. 



I. — On the hifluence of Indian Forests on the Bainfall. — By Henry 

 F. Blanpord, F. R. S., Meteorological Reporter to the Government of 

 India. 



[Received Jan. 20th ;— Eead Feb. 2nd, 1887.] 



(With a Woodcut.) 



The following paper is an extract from the yet unpublished manu- 

 script of the second part of a paper on the Rainfall of India ; the first 

 part of which has already been issued as an official publication in the 

 Indian Meteorological Memoirs. In consideration of the great economic 

 importance of the subject treated of, and also with a view to encourage 

 and assist further enquiries, whenever favourable opportunities may 

 offer, it has seemed desirable to publish this discussion in an independent 

 form, and in anticipation of its appearance in the Indian Meteorological 

 Memoirs ; where it will form but a small and subordinate part of a 

 memoir dealing with a subject of much wider range. 



In an instructive paper originally communicated to Petermanns 

 Mittesihmgen, and subsequently published in translation in the Quarterly 

 Journal of the Boyal Meteorological Society, M. Woeikoff appeals em- 

 phatically to the evidence afforded by the Indian rainfall registers, in 

 support of his contention that the action of forests is to increase the 

 rainfall of a country. His appeal is directed chiefly to the contrast 

 afforded by the Assam rainfall with that of the Gangetic valley plain, 

 in about the same latitude and the same distance from the sea ; and he 

 1 



