302 INDIAN METEOROLOGY. 



dealing with, unsystematized observations cropped up in connexion 

 with the question of the influence of forests on rainfall. The rain- 

 fall statistics of the Central Provinces for the previous 20 years, 

 if they could be accepted as true, would have established most 

 conclusively that the extension of forests had been accompanied by 

 a marked increase in the average rainfall of the forest districts. 

 But when Mr. Blanford proceeded to make further inquiry into the 

 value of these rainfall returns, the Chief Commissioner for the 

 Central Provinces in his reply had to acknowledge that, owing to the 

 uncertainty as to the gauges used in past years and the carelessness 

 in registration, the records were unreliable. The effect of this 

 unsystematic registration was to postpone the decision as to the 

 influence of forests on rainfall in that area for another 20 years. 



Improvements were also made by Mr. Bliot in the daily weather 

 report, which was in future to be accompanied by a chart. By the 

 1st April 1888, copies were issued to 228 Government officers in all 

 parts of India, and to a limited number of meteorological bureaux 

 and authorities in Europe and America. The daily weather report 

 and chart in its new form compared not unfavourably with those 

 published by the meteorological departments of England, France, 

 Italy, Algeria, Austria, Germany, Australia, and the United States. 

 It also possessed a special value as dealing almost entirely with a 

 tropical region, and one where the most striking example of the 

 semi-annual system of south-west and north-east monsoons occurs. 



In November 1886 the duty of issuing storm warnings to the 

 Burma and Madras ports was entrusted to the meteorological 

 leporter to the Government of Bengal, and this had been accepted 

 by Mr. Eliot, with the proviso that certain arrangements should be 

 made for rapid telegraphic communication between the Calcutta 

 weather office and the distant port officers and observatory superin- 

 tendents at the Burma and Madras ports during stormy weather. 



The charts of the Arabian sea, prepared by Mr. Dallas from the 

 data collected by the Board of Trade from ships navigating that 

 sea during the period 1S55-7S, were published during the year 

 1887-SS, in exactly the same form as the charts of the Bay of 

 Bengal. Part IV. of Volume IV. of the " Indian Meleorological 

 Memoirs," giving a list of storms during the years 1882-86, 

 with brief descriptions similar to the list published in Part VI., 

 Vol. II., and intended as a continuation of that list, bringing 

 the information up to date and followed by a full account of 



