164 A. N. Pearson — 'Rainfall in Northern India. [Nov., 



shore stands the Chaul Kadee beacon, a masonry tower sixty feet high, 

 on a rock abont 6 feet above low water of ordinary spring tides, which 

 rise on it about 12 feet, rather less than more. The observer's glass 

 being about 9 feet above high water mark, the tower was carefully 

 watched at high water almost every day and on every day when the 

 sea was unusually high. The sea is commonly said to " break over the 

 tower ; " the spray undoubtedly does often fly over the top of it, and 

 the foam rears up to about two-thirds of the height of it, perhaps more ; 

 but the solid body of the wave, the " green sea," never appears to reach 

 up more than about one-third of it, and very rarely so high. It should 

 be stated that there is 14 feet of water at low water, ordinary spring 

 tides, within a few yards to seaward of the base of the tower, so that 

 at high water it is on the dangerous belt between three and four 

 fathoms. Observation of the tower failed to show any clearly marked 

 .succession of waves by number, or any constant interval of time be- 

 tween the biggest waves ; nor was the association of three big waves so 

 much noticed on it as in the boats. But sometimes a wave, itself above 

 the average, would either follow or precede one which seemed to be not 

 only much higher than it, but much longer in getting past the tower ; 

 and it is possible that this latter was really made up of two, heaped 

 together on the reef. 



The President said that in the first communication he had received 

 from Mr. Sinclair, whom he had known for some year or two as an 

 acute observer of physical phenomena that came in his way, he had 

 merely given the results of his observations on the waves. He had 

 therefore asked him to draw up the present short note describing his 

 method of measuring the height of the waves. It was a general 

 belief that in the waves on coasts every third, or seventh wave, or that at 

 some other numerical interval, was bigger than the others, implying 

 of course a compound system of waves. Such phenomena, if real, were 

 probably only of local significance and might depend on the form of 

 the sea bottom, and the advance of two or more wave series of different 

 periodicity from different directions. 



4. Variations of Rainfall in Northern India during the Sunspot 

 Period. — By A. N. Peakson, Officiating Meteorological Reporter for 

 Western India. Communicated by H. F. Blanford, F. R. S. 



(Abstract.) 

 The author refers to Mr. S. A. Hill's paper in the Indian Meteoro- 

 logical Memoirs, showing the opposition that exists between the varia- 

 tions of the winter and of the summer rainfall in Northern India 



