402 CLIMATE OF SIKKIM. Appendix F. 



an insufficient one of the rain-fall, kept by the medical officer in 

 charge of the station ; who, in this, as in all similar cases,* has 

 neither the time nor the opportunity to give even the minimum of 

 required attention to the subject of meteorology. This defect has 

 been in a measure remedied by Dr. Chapman, who kept a twelve- 

 months' register in 1837, with instruments carefully compared 

 with Calcutta standards by the late James Prinsep, Esq., one of 

 the most accomplished men in literature and science that India 

 ever saw. 



The annual means of temperature, rain-fall, &c, vary greatly in 

 the Himalaya ; and apparently slight local causes produce such great 

 differences of temperature and humidity, that one year's observations 

 taken at one spot, however full and accurate they may be, are 

 insufficient : this is remarkably the case in Sikkim, where the rain- 

 fall is great, and where the difference between those of two consecu- 

 tive years is often greater than the whole annual London fall. My 

 own meteorological observations necessarily form but a broken series, 

 but they were made with the best instruments, and with a view to 

 obtaining results that should be comparable inter "se, and with those 

 of Calcutta ; when away from Dorjiling too, in the interior of Sikkim, 

 I had the advantage of Mr. Muller's services in taking observations 

 at hours agreed upon previous to my leaving, and these were of the 

 greatest importance, both for calculating elevations, and for ascer- 

 taining the differences of temperature, humidity, diurnal atmospheric 

 tide, and rain-fall ; all of which vary with the elevation, and the 

 distance from the plains of India. 



Mr. Hodgson's house proved a most favourable spot for an observa- 

 tory, being placed on the top of the Dorjiling spur, with its broad 

 verandah facing the north, in which I protected the instruments from 



* The government of India has gone to an immense expense, and entailed 

 a heavy duty upon its stationary medical officers, in supplying them with some- 

 times admirable, but more often very inaccurate, meteorological instruments, 

 and requiring that daily registers be made, and transmitted to Calcutta. In 

 no case have I found it to be in the officer's power to carry out this object; he 

 lias never time, seldom the necessary knowledge and experience, and far too often 

 no inclination. The majority of the observations are in most cases left to personal 

 native or other servants, and the laborious results I have examined are too 

 frequently worthless. 



