2 46 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [August, 



waters (if Mr. Dall remembered rightly) had been occasionally 

 reported, but hardly believed. The only other solution suggested 

 at Furreedpore was, that the noises were caused by the falling in 

 of large masses of earth from the sides of rivers which are every 

 year changing their beds. The " guns" were heard, occasionally, 

 in tolerably quick succession ; and sometimes three or four in the 

 course of an hour ; and again weeks would pass without their being 

 heard at all. But of this the speaker was not very definitely in- 

 formed. He was sure that careful and intelligent observers, like 

 Mr. Kavenshaw, would give the Society all they knew on the sub- 

 ject if applied to by the Secretary. 



Mr. Blanford said, that to enable the meeting better to appre- 

 ciate the nature of the phenomenon described by Mr. Rainey, and 

 the explanations that had been hazarded respecting it, he would 

 first read the brief notice of the Barisal guns that had already 

 appeared in the pages of the Society's Journal. After reading 

 an extract from a paper by Babu Gour Das Bysack, published in 

 Part 1 of the Journal for 1867, (Vol. XXXYI) he pointed out that 

 of the causes suggested, one only could be considered a vera causa 

 and worthy therefore of attention, viz. that suggested by Mr. Pellew 

 in the extract he had read, and again this evening by the President 

 of the Society. Subterranean and volcanic agencies, &c, in the 

 absence of any corroborative evidence, must be classed with the 

 1 electricity 1 which, at the present day, is popularly appealed to, as the 

 cause of every ill-understood phenomenon, precisely as ' sulphur 1 

 was appealed to in earlier times, under similar circumstances. A 

 thick alluvial formation such as the Delta, would be but ill-fitted 

 for conveying a sound wave under any circumstances, and did any 

 such sound as that described proceed from subterranean volcanic 

 action, it is difficult to conceive that it should be unaccompanied by 

 any tremour of the ground. But none such is spoken of. 



The conditions under which the sounds were heard, were all such 

 as to point to the breaking of the surf as their cause. They are 

 heard during the S.W. monsoon, especially in the lull after a 

 squall when the surf therefore is highest. To clear up every 

 supposed difficulty, much closer observation was doubtless re- 

 quired, than had hitherto been given to the matter. But as far as 



