CLIMATE OF INDIA. The Hindu races familiar with the tropical countries in which they dwell, use water ' as the term for describing the effects of a clitnato on health. In this sense it is the salubrity of a locality that is alluded to. Mahoinedans of Asia. treat of seven climates, the fIaft aklim. This applies to the northern hemi sphere, which they partition with zones of various breadth from east to west. When alluding to the salubrity of a locality, the Mahomedans of India and Persia use the words Ab-o-Howa, water and air. In Hindustan the people usually arrange the year into three periods, the Choumasa or Barklia, which is the rainy season, of four months' duration ; after which is the Seeala, or Jara, or Mohasa, the cold season ; followed by the Dhoop kala or K'hursa, or hot season. This division indicates generally the course of the seasons in India, though in one locality the rains or the hot or cold seasons may be somewhat more prolonged. The primary divisions of continental India are form—Hindustan, including in which term tho whole Peninsula of India, and the Gangetic plain to the base of tho Himalaya. 2. The Himalaya, a mountain chain which rises abruptly from the Gangetic plain, and is connected with a still loftier mountain mass (of Tibet) to the north, and beyond India. 3. Eastern India ultra Gangem, including native and British Burma and the Malay Peninsula. 4. Afghanistan. These divisions are marked out by great mountain barriers and by the ocean. The Himalaya mountains on the north are no where under 15,000 feet, usually exceed 17,000 and 18,000 feet, and rise in isolated peaks or groups of peaks to 21,000 and to 28,0.00 feet.
From the western extremity of the Himalaya, the Afghan mountains descend parallel with the Indus, with a gradually decreasing elevation from above 15,000 feet to the level of the ocean at the Arabian Sea. Throughout Afghanistan the climate is excessive. Tho cold of the winter is intense, the spring is damp and raw, and the summer, during which hot west winds prevail, is intensely hot at all elevations. The general aspect of the whole of Afghanistan is that of mountains with broad flat valleys. The crops aro chiefly
wheat and barley, even up to 10,000 feet elevation. Rice is cultivated in great quantity at Jalalabad 2000 feet, at Kabul 6100 feet, and to a consider able extent at Ghazni, 7730 feet,. Poplars, willows, and date-palm trees are extensively planted, as well as mulberry, walnut, apricot, apple, pear, and peach trees, and also tho Elxagnus orientalis, which bears an eatable fruit. The vine abounds as in all warm and dry temperate climates. The majority of tho Afghan and Tibetan plants are also on the ono hand natives respectively of the Caspian steppes and N. Persia, and of Siberia on the other.
- The date is cnItivated in I3aluchistan up to 4500 feet; and a dwarf palm, Chamterops Ritchieana of Griffith, perhaps identical with the Chanutrops humilis of Europe, occurs abundantly in many places, but with a somewhat local distribution.
The Burma and Malayan mountains, being given off from the snowclad mountains of East Tibet, run to the south, and, though rapidly diminishing in elevation, are continued almost to the equator. The mean temperature of the Malay Peninsula is probably abou t 80° at the level of the sea, and in its general humidity it also approaches to uniformity ; but dry and rainy weather are more distinctly separated in the northern countries than in the southern. The latter are not subject to the occasional violent rains and prolonged droughts which visit the former, and the former are not exposed to the frequent tracts of damp, foggy, rainy weather which are experienced in the latter. During the N.E. monsoon, which ordinarily blows from November to March, the weather is generally settled in the Straits of Malacca, and N. and N.E. winds prevail, particularly on the coast of the Peninsula, but are not of great strength save towards the northern end of the Straits. Breezes usually blow from the peninsular shore at night. The equable character of this season is attributable to the monsoon being broken by the mountains of the Peninsula, which stretch transversely to its direction.