250 Proceedings of the Asiatic Society. [August, 



similar to that of other parts of the Orissa and Madras coast. There 

 are no estuaries with expanses of sand banks which are dry at low 

 water and exposed to the full brunt of the S. W. wind, and the 

 direction of the wind in the S. W. monsoon is more or less parallel 

 to the coast. There is therefore but one line of breakers, and the 

 sound they produce is not so likely to be heard far inland. He 

 could not therefore attach much weight to Babu Rajendralala Mitra's 

 objection. 



In reply to Mr. Blanford, Babu Kajendralala Mitra said that 

 it was true that the position of the Mahanaddi running towards 

 the east was not favorable to a particularly heavy surf, but the 

 Irawati opened to the south, and the rush of the tidal wave from 

 the Southern Hemisphere marched on its coast with great force, but 

 yet the peculiar booming sound was there never produced. 



The President thought that Mr. Westland had over-estimated 

 the force of two of the objections which he proposed to Mr. Blan- 

 ford's explanation. In the first place, he felt sure from his own 

 experience, that under favourable circumstances, the report of heavy 

 ordnance might be heard at distances comparable with those of 

 which Mr. Eainey wrote ; in the part of Suffolk, with which he was 

 familiar, it was not an uncommon thing to hear the guns of the 

 Harwich redoubt, say twenty miles off, and probably these were 

 all pieces of small calibre. And on some occasions, the sounds of 

 firing at Sheerness or elsewhere in the neighbourhood of the mouth 

 of the Thames, reached the same place, and must have traversed not 

 less than fifty miles. Also he thought that if they reflected for a 

 moment upon the behaviour of a roller as it broke upon the shore, 

 they would perceive a reason, why its sound might at a distance 

 be nothing more than a single report. The mass of water in mo- 

 tion, constituting one of these rollers, was during the swell, which 

 succeeded a storm in the bay, exceedingly large. As the lower 

 part was checked in its advance over the shallow flats of the coast, 

 the crest of the wave gained upon its base, until it was left with- 

 out support, and then an enormous volume of water endued with 

 considerable horizontal velocity, fell from some height with a very 

 great shock ; this occurred first at the point of the roller where the 

 mass and the elevation was the groatest ; the shock was sudden, be- 





