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saturation point, and the great weight of vapour its high temperature enables it to hold in suspension, a very slight fall of the thermometer is accompanied by the

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condensation of a large absolute quantity of atmospheric vapour, so that copious dews and heavy showers of rain are produced at comparatively high temperatures and

low altitudes. The drops of rain rapidly increase in size while falling through the saturated atmosphere; and during this process as well as by the formation of dew, the heat which retained the water in the gaseous form, and was insensible while doing so, is liberated, and thus helps to keep up the high temperature of the air. This production of heat is almost always going on. In fine weather the nights are always dewy, and the diagram on the preceding page showing the mean monthly rainfall at Batavia and Greenwich proves that this source of increased temperature is present during every month in the year, since the lowest monthly fall at the former place is almost equal to the highest monthly fall at the

latter.

It may perhaps be objected, that evaporation must absorb as much heat as is afterwards liberated by condensation, and this is true; but as evaporation and condensation occur usually at different times and in different places, the equalising effect is still very important. Evaporation occurs chiefly during the hottest sunshine, when it tends to moderate the extreme heat, while condensation takes place chiefly at night in the form of dew and rain, when the liberated heat helps to make up for the loss of the direct rays of the sun. Again, the most copious condensation both of dew and rain is greatly influenced by vegetation and especially by forests, and also by the presence of hills and mountains, and is therefore greater on land than on the ocean; while evaporation is much greater on the ocean, both on account of the less amount of cloudy weather and because the air is more constantly in motion. This is particularly the case throughout that large

portion of the tropical and subtropical zones where the trade-winds constantly blow, as the evaporation must there be enormous while the quantity of rain is very small. It follows, then, that on the equatorial landsurface there will be a considerable balance of condensation over evaporation which must tend to the general raising of the temperature, and, owing to the condensation being principally at night, not less powerfully to its equalisation.

General Features of the Equatorial Climate.-The various causes now enumerated are sufficient to enable us to understand how the great characteristic features of the climate of the equatorial zone are brought about; how it is that so high a temperature is maintained during the absence of the sun at night, and why so little effect is produced by the sun's varying altitude. during its passage from the northern to the southern tropic. In this favoured zone the heat is never oppressive, as it so often becomes on the borders of the tropics; and the large absolute amount of moisture always present in the air, is almost as congenial to the health of man as it is favourable to the growth and development of vegetation. Again, the lowering of the temperature at night is so regular and yet so strictly limited in amount, that, although never cold enough to be unpleasant, the nights are never so oppressively hot as to prevent sleep. During the wettest months of the year, it is rare to have many days in succession

Where the inhabitants adapt their mode of life to the peculiarities of the climate, as is the case with the Dutch in the Malay Archipelago, they enjoy as robust health as in Europe, both in the case of persons born in Europe and of those who for generations have lived under a vertical sun.

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without some hours of sunshine, while even in the driest months there are occasional showers to cool and refresh the overheated earth. As a result of this condition of the earth and atmosphere, there is no check to vegetation, and little if any demarcation of the seasons. Plants are all evergreen; flowers and fruits, although more abundant at certain seasons, are never altogether absent; while many annual food-plants as well as some fruit-trees produce two crops a year. In other cases, more than one complete year is required to mature the large and massive fruits, so that it is not uncommon for fruit to be ripe at the same time that the tree is covered with flowers, in preparation for the succeeding crop. This is the case with the Brazil nut tree, in the forests of the Amazon, and with many other tropical as with a few temperate fruits.

Uniformity of the Equatorial Climate in all Parts of the Globe. The description of the climatal phenomena of the equatorial zone here given, has been in great part drawn from long personal experience in South America and in the Malay Archipelago. Over a large portion of these countries the same general features prevail, only modified by varying local conditions. Whether we are at Singapore or Batavia; in the Moluccas, or New Guinea; at Para, at the sources of the Rio Negro, or on the Upper Amazon, the equatorial climate is essentially the same, and we have no reason to believe that it materially differs in Guinea or the Congo. In certain localities, however, a more contrasted wet and dry season prevails, with a somewhat greater range of the thermometer. This is generally associated with a sandy soil, and a less dense forest, or with an open and more

cultivated country. The open sandy country with scattered trees and shrubs or occasional thickets, which is found at Santarem and Monte-Alegre on the lower Amazon, are examples, as well as the open cultivated plains of Southern Celebes; but in both cases the forest country in adjacent districts has a moister and more uniform climate, so that it seems probable that the nature of the soil or the artificial clearing away of the forests, are important agents in producing the departure from the typical equatorial climate observed in such districts. The almost rainless district of Ceara on the North-East coast of Brazil and only a few degrees south of the equator, is a striking example of the need of vegetation to react on the rainfall. We have here no apparent cause but the sandy soil and bare hills, which when heated by the equatorial sun produce ascending currents of warm air and thus prevent the condensation of the atmospheric vapour, to account for such an anomaly; and there is probably no district where judicious planting would produce such striking and beneficial effects. In Central India the scanty and intermittent rainfall, with its fearful accompaniment of famine, is no doubt in great part due to the absence of a sufficient proportion of forest-covering to the earth's surface; and it is to a systematic planting of all the hill tops, elevated ridges, and higher slopes that we can alone look for a radical cure of the evil. This would almost certainly induce an increased rainfall; but even more important and more certain, is the action of forests in checking evaporation from the soil and causing perennial springs to flow, which may be collected in

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