322 APPLICATION OF PEmCIPLES. 



every afternoon about four or five o'clock with a 

 thunderstorm. The heaviness of the rain can only 

 be conceived by those who have been in these lati- 

 tudes. This fall naturally arrests the sea breeze, and 

 the succeeding night is dark and cloudy. Formerly 

 these diurnal rains came on with such regularity that 

 it was usual, in forming parties of pleasure, to arrange 

 whether they should take place before or after the 

 storm. During this period of the year there is sel- 

 dom, if ever, a deposition of dew. From April until 

 September very little rain falls ; vegetation almost 

 stops, and, to the eye of every one who has not just 

 arrived from Europe, a wintry appearance is discern- 

 ible. The land and sea breezes do not succeed each 

 other with the same regularity, and are, besides, 

 more frequently disturbed by violent gusts from the 

 S. W., imagined to be the tails of those destructive 

 winds, the Pamperos of the Eiver Plate. The nights 

 are beautifully clear ; Venus casts a shadow, and the 

 southern constellations are seen in all their beauty. 

 The dews, as might be expeo^d, are at this season 

 very copious." {Brande^s Journal, No. 27, p. 41.) 



In other parts of the tropics the seasons of growth 

 and rest are equally marked. In Ava, during the 

 rainy season, which lasts from May to October, the 

 mean temperature varies from 78° to 91-5° ; while, 

 in the dry season, from November to April, it falls to 

 from 63° to 80°. At Calcutta, in the growing season, 

 from April to October, 58 inches of rain commonly 

 fall, with a mean temperature of 79° to 86° ; while, 

 during the season of rest, from Noveittber to March, 



