ear on the horizon and roll slowly onwards,
accompanied by vivid lightning, loud peals of thunder and torrential
rain. In the June of fact practically the whole month is composed of
hot, dry, dusty, oppressive days; for the monsoon rarely reaches
Northern India before the last week of the month and often tarries
till the middle of July, or even later.

The first rain causes the temperature to fall immediately. It is no
uncommon thing for the mercury in the thermometer to sink 20 degrees
in a few minutes. While the rain is actually descending the weather
feels refreshingly cool in contrast to the previous furnace-like heat.
Small wonder then that the advent of the creative monsoon is more
heartily welcomed in India than is spring in England. No sound is more
pleasing to the human ear than the drumming of the first monsoon rain.

But alas! the physical relief brought by the monsoon is only
temporary. The temperature rises the moment the rain ceases to fall,
and the prolonged breaks in the rains that occur every year render the
last state of the climate worse than the first. The air is so charged
with moisture that it cannot absorb the perspiration that emanates
from the bodies of the human beings condemned to existence in this
humid Inferno. For weeks together we live in a vapour-bath, and to the
physical discomfort of perpetual clamminess is added the irritation of
prickly heat.

Moreover, the rain brings with it myriads of torments in the form of
termites, beetles, stinking bugs, flies, mosquitoes and other creeping
and flying things, which bite and tease and find their way into every
article of food and drink. The rain also awakens from their slumbers
the frogs that have hibernated and aestivated in the sun-baked beds of
dried-up ditches and tanks. These awakened amphibia fill the welkin
with their croakings, which take the place of the avian chorus at
night. The latter ceases with dramatic abruptness with the first fall
of monsoon rain. During the monsoon the silence of the night is broken
only by the sound of falling raindrops, or the croaking of the frogs,
the stridulation of crickets innumerable, and the owlet's feeble call.
Before the coming of the monsoon the diurnal chorus of the day birds
begins to flag because the nesting season for many species is drawing
to a close. The magpie-robin still pours forth his splendid song, but
the quality of the music in the case of many individuals is already
beginning to fa