INUNDATIONS are of frequent occurrence in India from rainfalls and from storm-waves, and have been noticed under the headings 'Floods' and Cyclones.' The most calamitous have been from storm-waves striking the Coromandel coast and the islands at the delta of the Ganges. The cyclones have been examined by Colonel Capper of Madras, Mr. Redfield of the United States, Professor Dove, Lieutenant-Colonel Reid, Mr. Piddington of Calcutta, who suggested the term cyclone ; also by Mr. Espy of Philadelphia, and by Messrs. Meldrum, Blanford, Wilson, and Elliot. Those of the Laccadive Islands, in a hurricane of April 1847, were described by Captain Biden in Madras Spectator, 1st, and Bombay Times, 4th October 1847, and in the Bombay Times, 13th August 1850. An account of remarkable inundations in India in 1849 was given by Dr. Buist in Bl. As. Trans., 1851, and Edin. Phil. J1., 1851 ; and inundations of the
Brahmaputra in Assam were described by Dr. M'Cosh in Topography of 1837. Inundations occurred of the Ganges on 21st August 1838, when it rose at Allahabad 43 feet, and did immense damage at Benares. Hoshangabad was on the same occasion flooded by the rise of the Nerbadda. One of the Indus, in 1841, supposed to have been occasioned by the bursting of a glacier, was described in Bl. As. Trans., 1848, xviii. Those of the Tapti, for the past thirty years, were described in Bombay Times, 1851. Inundations at, the mouth of the Ganges, occasioned by hurricanes, occurred in May 1823 and May 1830, Bl. As. Trans. i. p. 25 ; and the great storm-wave which struck the coast at the estuary of the Megna at 3 A.M. of the let Novem ber, in which 215,000 persons perished, was described by Mr. J. Elliot.