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on which one might speak for hours ; but I shall not venture to trespass 
on your patience so long as that. I should, however, like to allude to one or 
two points in connexion with the rainfall with which I have been most 
familiar,— that of the great portion of Asia known as British India. In 
that part of the world, very much w r hat has been described by Mr. Bateman, 
only on a much more extensive scale, takes place. You have there a 
country which is entirely dependent on the rainfall for its crops, its 
animal life, and the existence of its people. You have probably heard of 
late years a good deal about the famines which devastate India at recurring 
periods. These famines have been mainly due to an imperfect rainfall which 
in some seasons is experienced there. In that great country, which is not 
visited by uncertain rains at every season of the year, or on any day, such as 
may be the case in this country, but where there are three distinct seasons of 
cold, heat, and rain, the climate is under the influence of laws that are 
much more certain than in this northern country. The monsoons,— those 
great trade or seasonal winds, — the word “ monsoon ” being a corruption or 
alteration of the Arabic word “ maussim,” a “ season,” come laden with 
moisture from the equatorial regions, and which they carry over the 
great continent of India. The moisture is brought up by the south-west 
monsoon, — that is to say, a great current of hot air rushing upwards from 
the heated regions at the equator, takes with it a quantity of moisture 
abstracted from the heated ocean ; meeting with mountain ridges something 
like, only infinitely higher than, those described by Mr. Bateman, a vast 
change then takes place in the condition of this south-westerly wind. For 
example, the monsoon from the south-western extremity of India, on the 
Malabar Coast, at Cape Comorin, begins to set in in May, when a great 
deposit takes place. This is what is called the “ bursting ” of the monsoon. 
The clouds come up suddenly, the air is intensely electrical, and very 
heavy rain falls. In passing over the hills that run along the western coast 
of India, those known as the Western Ghauts, — hills of from 3,000 to 
5,000 feet in height, — a great part of the moisture is squeezed out, and in 
so doing the winds part with so much rain that on the Coromandel Coast 
there is at that time literally no rain at all. The air being thoroughly 
desiccated, and deprived of its moisture by the mountains over which it 
passes, the result is as I have said, that there is, at that period, no rainy 
season at all on the Coromandel coast. Travelling in a north-easterly 
direction it reaches the Himalayas and those great mountains which separate 
India from China and Siam, when, striking against the hills, it is deflected 
to the north-west. Here a most marvellous phenomenon takes place ; for 
we then have the most extraordinary rainfall in the world, to which anything 
ever seen in Europe is a mere bagatelle. There is a station there, — or, at 
least, there was ; for it is now no longer a station, its physical conditions being 
such that it was obliged to be abandoned, — situated at an elevation of about 
4,500 feet. Now Mr. Bateman has stated that an elevation of 4,500 feet 
was that at which the deposit of rain in India most readily took place, 
and that in that country this elevation corresponded with 2,000 feet in England, 
