'The Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society. From December 1854 to March 1856. (New Issue.) Edited by the Secretary. Volume XII.' [‎8] (119/258)

of climate but to improved registration. On tlie other hand, again, when
we find 184:9 affording us fifteen storms, or above three times the number
of any of the years around, when there is no reason why there should have
been any change in respect of registry, we may fairly set this year down
ns having been peculiarly favoured in its falls of hail. As already statedj
it was not till 1847, that I began to carry out this process of scissors and
paste registration—theseven and a half years it has been in practice give
accounts of above sixty hailstorms, or an average of nine annually.
If, in reference to the season of the year when, the localities where hail
storms occur, as well as the frequency of their occurrence on an average of
years, very great uncertainty prevails, there is a large number of facts
formerly ignored, discredited, or classed amongst the catalogueof possibili.
ties that have never been fully verified, of which we are only begin
ning to avail ourselves ,• and instead of having to deal with the most
vague and uncertain statements as to blocks of ice the size of elephants,
or hailstones as large as oranges, potatoes, pumpkins, or pullets’ eggs»
we have now, in the midst of a heap of descriptions of this sort, a sufficient
number to render those intelligible of accounts where feet and inches,
pounds, ounces and grains, as determined by trustworthy and competent
observers, are supplied.
There are four occasions on which remarkable masses of ice, of many
hundred pounds in weight, are believed to have fallen in India. (Dr.
Thomson records dozens of such in all parts of Europe.) One near
Seringapatam, in the end of last century, said to have been the size
of an elephant. It took three days to melt. We have no further parti
culars, but there is no reason whatever for our doubting the fact.
In 1826, a mass of ice nearly a cubic yard in size, fell in Khandeisb.
In April 1838, a mass of hailstones, 20 feet in its larger diam eter, fell
at Dharwar.
i
On the 22ud of May, after a violent hailstorm, 80 miles south of Ban-
galoiCj an immense block of ice, consisting of hailstones cemented to-
gather, was found in a dry well.
These masses of ice, like many of those considered hailstones of the largest
size, have, in all probability, been formed by violent whirlwinds or eddies*
and seem to have reached the monstrous dimensions in which we find them,