1020 A Seventh Memoir on the Law of Storms in India. [No. 131. 



at this station for the last seven years. The annual passing showers of 

 January and February did not visit us. March and April, though 

 generally one stream of strong N. W. and N. E. winds, approached 

 us with somewhat less fury, and with a secession of a day or two 

 intervening between the gusts. May was sultry in the day without 

 the usual hot-winds, but attended with a cooler feeling by midnight, 

 until near the 19th, when the air became heavy and oppressive to 

 a degree, and the sky had a peculiar hue about the time of the setting 

 of the sun ; this continued until the morning of the 21st, and though 

 we look forward to some kind of coolness, or a light air about dawn, 

 it was the reverse this morning, a lethargic sensation seemed to hang 

 about one until quarter after nine, when the earth was observed to 

 tremble and rock from E. to W. for half a minute, vibrating those 

 wall shades only in that line ; when, as if a second shock, though I 

 could perceive no stop, came from the direction of N. and S. affecting 

 the wall shades again in that line; the last undulation appeared the 

 strongest, this was repeated three times each with less force. On the 

 23rd, two more slight shocks were felt, since which period up to the 

 night of the second of June, the sky assumed every evening an ashy 

 colour, blended with tints of a salmony hue, and very oppressively hot. 

 A strange effect it appeared to have on all trees in either blossom or 

 young fruit. As a proof of this, the whole of the fruit in my garden 

 was stunted in its size, with a kind of harsh flavor, though free from 

 any worm ; the blossoms falling off in a manner as if each leaf was 

 partially baked to make it crisp. The star-apple flowered three 

 times, and fruited twice in May and June, and several kinds of plants 

 seemed to shrink and stay their growth. As I am no Botanist, and 

 but a bad Agriculturist or Horticulturist, I cannot, I regret to say, give 

 you a better relation. 



The night of the 2nd June and the whole of that day, there was 

 not sufficient air to move a single leaf; it was so oppressive, that I 

 observed the very air produced from the punkah, when pulled, de- 

 scended hot, and this oppression continued apparently in an increased 

 ratio until about two o'clock in the morning of the 3rd, when the first 

 burst of wind came on from the N. W. ; so sudden and so rapid was its 

 progress, that nothing I could write, could explain the rapidity of th< 

 change, when it chopped round to N. E. in awful gusts, such as 



