297 
took certain pieces of this land, enclosed them, irrigated and cultivated 
them, and before five or six years were over, those sands were tolerably 
productive gardens. There has always been a great want of wood in 
India, and fire-wood is very expensive. There was a great sacrifice of 
wood caused by the introduction of railways. There was an extreme, 
almost a rabid, anxiety to get wood for sleepers, and large forests were 
cut down and carted away for the purpose. When I first went to 
India, thirty-three years ago, no person had any need to be what is called 
weatherwise. The seasons were then almost as regular in India as day 
and night are in England. You know perfectly well in Calcutta that on 
the 20th or 21st of June the rains would set in, and so on with regard to 
the rest of the climatic changes. Everything was fixed ; but of late years, 
and especially since heavy cyclones have been frequent in southern India, 
there has been a difference : whether this is a mere coincidence or stands in 
the relation of cause and effect I am unable to say. At any rate, the climate of 
Calcutta is beginning, as to the rainy season, to be in some years most uncertain. 
In olden times, from the 20th of June until September, we had heavy rains 
every day, generally until about five or six o’clock in the afternoon, which 
was our driving time, and then we could get out and take a little exercise. 
The rainfall amounted to some 60 or 70 inches in the course of the year ; but, 
of late years, you have sometimes almost a month in the rainy season without 
any rain whatever. The rainy season was a comparatively cool one, because 
the sun was kept off by the clouds. Now, that shelter is to a great extent 
withdrawn, and the sun comes down upon you with most intense heat. Co- 
incidently with this it is to be noticed that Calcutta, which is not a very 
ancient place, dating from about 1680, used to have in its vicinity beautiful 
forest trees, such as the tamarind, the peepul, and a great variety of others. 
It was, in old times, thought a great virtue to plant avenues of trees under 
which the troops and wayfarers could pass, and you see them still remaining 
on some of the old roads from Burhampoor, and between Calcutta and Bar- 
rackpore. It was the almost sacred duty of the Zemindar to have mango 
groves planted, which supplied the people with a food that is, perhaps, second 
only in value to rice in some of the districts, especially in Behar. Since the 
cyclones and the construction of the railways, the great trees of Calcutta have 
almost entirely disappeared ; and I cannot help thinking there is more than 
a mere coincidence between the disappearance of these trees and the great 
irregularity of the seasons in the Calcutta district, so that now one must be 
exceedingly weatherwise to predict what sort of a day one is likely to have. 
The great thing for scientific men to do is to endeavour to equalise the fall 
of rain in some of those unhappy countries where it is so uncertainly distri- 
buted. I believe that trees are beginning to be more plentiful in Scinde than 
they were. The objects to aim at are, first of all irrigation, then of course 
growth of the crops, and then the planting of forest trees. 
Mr. W. Griffith, Barrister-at-Law. — The subject is one of so much 
interest that I am sure a paper upon it from any member of the Victoria 
