298 INDIAN METEOROLOGY. 



Bay of Bengal. The January chart was lithographed on a reduced 

 scale as a specimen of the work, and circulated to the port officers, 

 Marine Weather Institutes, and some ship commanders for criticism, 

 some valuable suggestions being offered in reply. 



Up to 18S5 the daily weather reports had been issued at Simla 

 from the 1st May to the 1st October, and at Calcutta during the cold 

 season, but in this year it was arranged for the work to be carried 

 on permanently at Simla in future. 



Before 1885 there were only three observatories fully equipped 

 with autographic instruments for furnishing either a continuous 

 register or one repeated at short intervals : these were the Govern- 

 ment observatories at Calcutta (Adipore), Bombay (Colaba), and the 

 Maharajah's observatory at Jaipur. During 1885-6 a fourth was 

 established at Allahabad, and a portion of the instruments for a fifth 

 at Lahore were received shortly after, a suitable building having 

 been already provided. 



Some further additions were made to the stations transmitting 

 regular returns of rainfall to the Central Office, some being of 

 especial value as representing the arid region of Western Kajputana, 

 which but a few years since was an almost complete blank on the 

 charts of recorded rainfall. Improved returns of the Himalayan 

 snowfall were also received from hill stations on the north and 

 western frontiers. 



Attempts had been made to estimate the prospects of the monsoon 

 rains from the snowfall reports, and the wind and pressure distribu- 

 tion in the period immediately before the rainy season in each of the 

 preceding two or three years. In 1885, Mr. Blanford's prediction 

 on the 21st May was that the influx of the monsoon rains on the 

 west coast and in Southern and Western India generally would be 

 retarded, and this was amply borne out by the subsequent history of 

 the season. 



Some time before Dr. Brandis's retirement from the office of 

 Inspector-General of Forests with the Government of India, he 

 conferred with Mr. Blanford as to the establishment of observatories 

 in connexion with the forests, with a view to ascertaining the effect 

 of forests more especially on temperature and rainfall. As a result 

 an observatory was established at the Forest School at Dehra Dun, 

 which should serve as a model for the forest observatories and also 

 as a training school for observers. In July 1884, the first pair of 

 comparative observatories was started at the Forest Nursery, Ajmir, 

 in the following years various other pairs were established near 



