INDIAN METEOROLOGY. 293 



records at that station, illustrated by eight plates. Mr. Hill pub- 

 lished a table giving the monthly total rainfall at each station in the 

 North- West Provinces for 1880, the number of rainy days in each 

 month and the average monthly rainfall of each place. 



Owing to the prevalence of haze in fine dry weather, the actino- 

 metric observations taken for two years at Alipore were less 

 successful than had been hoped for, and on the recommendation of 

 the Solar Physics Committee, Leh, in Ladak, was selected as being 

 situated, as was hoped, in a clearer atmosphere and at a height above 

 the disturbing influences of the haze of the plains. 



During the year Mr. Eliot devised a new and improved system of 

 storm signals for the port and signalling stations on the Hugli, 

 below the port. The knowledge of such storms had by this time 

 advanced sufficiently to enable Mr. Eliot to a certain extent to predict 

 their course, a'matter of great importance to outgoing ships. The new 

 system of signalling made provision for this special information. In 

 connexion with the Bombay stonn=warning system Mr. E. Chambers 

 drew up an interesting list of some 70 storms of the west coast, 

 which was published in Yol. II., Part 1, of the Indian Meteorological 

 Memoirs. 



In 1881 Miss E. Isis Pogson was appointed meteorological super- 

 intendent to the Government of Madras, a step which resulted in 

 the prompter transmission of the Madras registers to headquarters, 

 and less delay in the preparation of the annual report. 



The first volume of the Meteorological Memoirs was completed by 

 the publication of Parts V. and VI., containing two papers by 

 Mr. Hill on the Meteorology of Allahabad and on that of the North- 

 western Himalaya, and a discussion of the hourly observations of 

 the barometer at Goalpara, Patna, and Leh, by Mr. Blanford, 



The following year was marked by efforts to obtain information 

 respecting the extent and thickness of the Himalayan snows, a 

 physical feature which appeared to exercise considerable influence 

 on the meteorology of the plains, and to which attention was first 

 directed in 1877. In April 1882, a communication was made by the 

 Government of India to the local governments of the northern 

 provinces, requesting that the attention of the civil officers and 

 Residents of Hill States might be particularly directed to this 

 matter, and it was recommended that monthly reports on the 

 state of the snows on the passes and higher ranges of the interior 

 should be drawn up from information obtained from native traders, 

 travellers, and others, and communicated to the central office. 



