INDIAN METEOROLOGY. 289 



and furthermore to supplement it by an extended system of report 

 of the rainfall from stations other than those provided with 

 meteorological observatories. Arrangements were also made for 

 transferring to the Meteorological Department the duty of working 

 the time-ball on the semaphore tower of Tort William, which had 

 been previously performed by the Surveyor-General's Department. 



An important incident of the year was a tentative forecast of the 

 character of the monsoon season, made by Mr. Eliot (who officiated 

 for Mr. Blanford during his absence on furlough). The retardation 

 of the monsoon rains in 1878, following on their almost complete 

 failure in the North- West Provinces in the previous year, was a 

 cause of grave anxiety. Mr. Eliot's opinion, on examination of the 

 whole subject, was that the advent of the rains would probably be 

 retarded, but that they would be more equally distributed than in 

 previous years. This prediction was borne out by the results. 



The work sanctioned by the Secretary of State in 1875, of 

 copying the ship observations relating to the Indian seas that had 

 accumulated in the Marine Department of the London Meteorological 

 Office, was fast approaching completion, and by it the basis of a 

 knowledge of the general meteorology of the adjacent seas, com- 

 parable to the existing knowledge of the land observatories, was 

 being laid. The observations of the Department had finally 

 dissipated some of the long prevalent errors respecting the Indian 

 monsoons, such as, for instance, the idea that the summer monsoon 

 of India is caused by the heat of Central Asia, and blows towards 

 that region. But with respect to the seas, there was still no 

 accurate knowledge of the origin of the summer wind, and it was 

 still doubtful whether the general body of the southern trade winds 

 crossed the equator and fed the monsoon, or whether, on the other 

 hand, the North Indian Ocean was not the chief source of the 

 vapour supply, and the connexion of the monsoon with the southern 

 trades only fortuitous and partial. Another problem awaiting 

 solution in the study of the meteorological marine logs was the 

 possible deficiency of pressure over parts of the ocean as bearing 

 on land droughts such as those of 1876. 



Owing to the increasing attention attaching to the connexion 

 between solar physics and meteorology (a matter discussed so long ago 

 as the beginning of the century by Sir John Herschel), Mr. Blan- 

 ford entered into communication with Professors Norman Lockyer and 

 Balfour Stewart, and, at their suggestion, obtained the Secretary of 

 State's sanction for the purchase of a new form of actinometer for 



