uth-west monsoon and the arrival of
the north-eastern. In the early part of the month the wind visits nearly
every point of the compass, but shows a marked predilection for the
north, generally veering from N.E. at night and early morning, to N.W.
at noon; calms are frequent and precede gentle showers, and clouds form
round the lower range of hills. By degrees as the sun advances in its
southern declination, and warms the lower half of the great African
continent, the current of heated air ascending from the equatorial belt
leaves a comparative vacuum, towards which the less rarefied atmospheric
fluid is drawn down from the regions north, of the tropic, bringing with
it the cold and dry winds from the Himalayan Alps, and the lofty ranges
of Assam. The great change is heralded as before by oppressive calms,
lurid skies, vivid lightning, bursts of thunder, and tumultuous rain.
But at this change of the monsoon the atmospheric disturbance is less
striking than in May; the previous temperature is lower, the moisture of
the air is more reduced, and the change is less agreeably perceptible
from the southern breeze to the dry and parching wind from the north.

[Sidenote:
Wind N.E.
Temperature 24 hours:
Mean greatest 85 deg.
Mean least 70 deg.
Rain (inches) 4.3]

_December_.--In December the sun attains to its greatest southern
declination, and the wind setting steadily from the northeast brings
with it light but frequent rains from Bay Of Bengal. The thermometer
shows a maximum temperature of 85 deg. with a minimum of 70 deg.; the
morning and the afternoon are again enjoyable in the open air, but at
night every lattice that faces the north is cautiously closed against
the treacherous "along-shore-wind."

Notwithstanding the violence and volume in which the rains have been
here described as descending during the paroxysms of the monsoons, the
total rain-fall in Ceylon is considerably less than on the continent of
Throughout Hindustan the annual mean is 117.5 and on some parts on the
Malabar coast, upwards of 300 inches have fallen in a single year[1];
whereas the in Ceylon rarely exceeds 80, and the highest registered in
an exceptional season was 120 inches.

[Footnote 1: At Mahabaleshwar, in the Western Ghauts, the annual mean is
254 inches, and at Uttray Mullay; in Malabar, 263; whilst at Bengal it
is 209 inches at Sylhet; and 610.3 at Cherraponga.]

The distribution is of course unequal, both as to