Geological Society. 65 



more scientific method has obtained. Excellent as many of these 

 observations were, furnishing, as in Howard's case, the elements of 

 climate, they were still isolated ; for while they recorded weather- 

 changes, it was only at the particular localities where they were ob- 

 served. For real advancement a network of stations was requisite : 

 to organize such a network was clearly out of the power of isolated 

 observers ; only large Associations could undertake a work of the 

 kind ; and even under the auspices of an old-established association, 

 such an undertaking might lack the necessary stability in order 

 to carry it out to a useful end. Governments alone could really 

 grapple with such an extensive subject as is presented to us in me- 

 teorology ; and this has been accomplished by both the American 

 and Indian Governments. In India many important questions, 

 bearing in no small degree on the welfare and even the lives of the 

 inhabitants, have arisen in consequence of the widespread calamities 

 with which the peninsula has been visited, particularly the recent 

 famines. To such questions Mr. Blanford, the Meteorological 

 Reporter to the Government of India, has directed his most sedu- 

 lous attention, and has sought to elucidate the links of the chain of 

 causation which led to and culminated in the famine of 1876. Two 

 of these links have been ascertained — one to consist of the failure 

 of rainfall in the western and southern provinces, where the staple 

 vegetation was withered to the condition of hay under an ever 

 cloudless sky, the other of a superabundant outpour over the Bur- 

 mese peninsula and the Bay of Bengal of the rain withheld from 

 the Provinces, which overcharged the Irawadi and caused those dis- 

 astrous floods that washed away and drowned the rice crops : thus 

 the famine was brought about by a failure and an excess of rainfall — 

 the failure being largely attributable to the prevalence of northerly 

 and north-westerly land winds, and the excess to a vapour-laden 

 current from the south-west, which, recurving cyclonically around 

 the Bay of Bengal, discharged its burden over the Bay and on the 

 south-east coast of the peninsula. 



This second report of the Department of Indian Meteorology is 

 an admirable specimen of the work effected by the Indian Govern- 

 ment. 



IX. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from yol. vi. p. 313.] 



November 20, 1878.— R. Etheridge, Esq., F.R.S., 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



HPHE following communications were read : — 

 -*- 1. " On the Upper-Greensand Coral Fauna of Haldon, Devon- 

 shire." By Prof. P. Martin Duncan, M.B. Lond., F.R.S., F.G.S., 

 &c. 



Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 7. No. 40. Jan. 1879. F 



