2nd Proposal.

To add the following clauses to rule 46.

"The Council shall have the power of appointing any other day not later than that day fortnight, for the annual meeting."

"After the termination of the regular business of the annual meeting, the meeting may be considered an ordinary general meeting."

Under the rule as it now stands, the annual meeting must be held on one particular day and on no other. Experience has shown this to be inconvenient.-The Council, therefore, propose that a limited discretion shall be conferred on them to alter the day when it appears expedient to do so.

The object of the 2nd clause proposed in this amendment is to give greater interest to the January meeting. Few members are found to attend when the business is confined to routine official statements and reports.

3rd Proposal.

To omit clause 1 of Rule 60, which provides that the names of visitors allowed to be present at a meeting shall be read aloud by the chairman.

This rule has fallen into abeyance, and as it is not considered desirable to enforce it, the Council recommend that it should be cancelled.

Resolved that the July meeting be made special to decide on these proposals.

The Council submitted the following report from the Meteorological Committee, and requested authority to address Government in the sense of the Committee's recommendations.

The Committee having had under their consideration the general measures to be adopted to further the objects with which they are specially concerned, have come to the following conclusions.

The value of the study of meteorological phenomena in a scientific and abstract point of view needs no discussion. Nor is the practical importance of this science in any degree less great than that. of any other branch of physical knowledge.

Every where the occupations of man, whether on the land or on the sea, are intimately bound up with the changes of the seasons, with the fall of rain, with the directions and forces of the winds, and

his very existence may be said to depend in great measure on the operation of atmospheric influences. The immediate connexion of health with climate is brought home to every one. Any progress made in a clear appreciation of the laws that regulate these phenomena, will therefore more or less directly become of real practical utility to us all. It is not intended to be said that we are ever likely to be able to bend the forces of nature as brought into play in atmospheric changes, so as to regulate the seasons or the winds to our will, this of course is unreasonable. But to know what is probable, to foresee what is the inevitable result of certain antecedent causes, is what we may expect. Indeed this practical application of meteorological science is already taking a very definite form, and the reports of the meteorological department of the Board of Trade in London are now generally accepted as giving a fair approximation to the course of the winds and weather for a day or so at least in advance, and as such are daily becoming of more practical utility to the mercantile world.

In India where the accidents of the seasons, so to speak, are developed with the intensity peculiar to tropical regions, there can at least be no smaller degree of value in such practical applications of science than in Europe. And to those who carry in their recollection the horrors of the late famine, it will be needless to say how inestimable a benefit would any thing be that would enable us to foresee these terrible calamities, and to prepare to meet them. Nor is there any thing at all unreasonable in anticipating that as the application of scientific knowledge now enables the sailor to foresee and avoid what used to be thought the irresistible and fatal hurricane, so this knowledge may be equally applied under other circumstances in enabling us to foresee and avoid what now seems the equally irresistible and equally merciless desolation caused by drought.

But the necessary precursor of the practical application of any science, is a careful, laborious and intelligent study of the actual phenomena; and it is obviously to this means that we must look here as elsewhere.

Nor need the intensity of tropical storms, or the extreme irregularity of the rain, which in one year will fall in a flood, while in another it will be scanty to such a degree as to create a famine, cause us to entertain any especial apprehension that we may there

For it is certain that in

fore be unable to trace back their causes. proportion as effects are extreme, causes are in fact strongly marked, whether we see them or not.

In truth, all meteorological phenomena are more or less directly dependent on the action of the sun on the earth's surface, and just in the same proportion as the power of the sun is great in a tropical country, so are atmospheric phenomena strongly marked, and so have we a right to expect greater facility in investigating their laws.

It is indeed, we believe, to observations made in tropical countries that the science of meteorology will eventually be indebted for any great advance that it may make.

Having these views, we are strongly impressed with the real importance of the study of this branch of science in India, and we hope that something may be done to give method and consistency to the many unsystematic and independent series of observations that are in fact now made in various parts of the country under various agencies.

The most important meteorological observations made in the Bengal Presidency are those of the Surveyor General's Department at Calcutta. They have been maintained for many years with all reasonable precautions to secure accuracy, so far as we are informed, and we feel that we are much indebted to the Government for them. Other similar series are made at Bombay and Madras. But till now we have never had any really systematic observations of this sort anywhere in the interior of the great continent of India under British rule. There have been many isolated series for short periods which are of a certain value, but for the purposes of science it is most important that the observation should be made at one and the same time over a large area, and in such a manner as to be really comparable one with another, which is very far from being the case in most of the old registers.

Next we may mention the observations made on the ships either of the Government or of private persons. With some little additional attention, these might be made of the highest utility as contributions to our knowledge; at present they can hardly be said to be brought into the common stock at all.

Besides the more systematic registers, there are many other re

cords of this sort kept up which are of considerable value and might be made much more so with a very little arrangement. Thus a register of rain fall is kept, we believe, in every district in India, and has been so kept for a very long series of years. If made with fair care these records might be invaluable in a scientific point of view.

Again the medical officers of the Government, all over the country, are expected to keep certain meteorological registers in their hospitals. We have no doubt that these records are kept by many medical officers with great care and accuracy. But on the other hand it is not to be denied that a large number of them are made with no sufficient attention. Further they are not truly susceptible of comparison one with another from the very different ways in which they are kept; and as it is impossible to distinguish the good from the bad, the value of the whole of them is very much diminished if not altogether lost,

Lastly, we would observe that the very essence of the value of such observations is, that they should be brought into relation one with another.

If when made they are only to be put into a cupboard, they had far better not be made at all. If it be worth the trouble to make them, it is worth the trouble to use them; and using them means reviewing them, as a whole, in a regular systematic and scientific

manner.

We do not conceal from ourselves that the difficulties in the way of such a methodic system of meteorological observation are great, but this is no reason for not attempting to overcome them.

On the whole, considering the circumstances of the country, and the fact that the great majority of observers will commonly be officers of the Government, what seems to us the course most likely to have a useful effect would be for the Government to constitute a Board of visitors of the Calcutta Observatory, for the purpose of making suggestions on this and kindred subjects. The difficulty of finding any individual with the scientific knowledge, theoretical and practical, necessary to make him a perfectly safe guide in such matters is acknowledged to be almost insuperable even in England. In India the thing is perfectly impossible, and the pressure of business on most persons interested in science is a further ground for trusting rather to a Board than to any individual adviser.

The Committee would wish it to be understood that the Board, the constitution of which they suggest, should have no power whatever excepting to offer its opinions on the subjects to which allusion has been made in this Report and perhaps on other kindred matters of science. It is not, however, for the Committee to offer any decided opinion as to any thing beyond the meteorological aspect of the questions. The Board would of course be purely honorary. It does not appear essential that all of its members should be residents in Calcutta or even in this Presidency.

The Committee have no doubt that if such a Board were constituted from the leading men of science in India, its recommendations would be received with thankfulness by the Government, and by all individual observers, and that such recommendations would practically carry with them sufficient weight to give that spirit of unity and method to all meteorological observations which is so entirely wanting at present, and which is so essential to any real progress in the science and its practical application.

Some remarks were made by Colonel Thuillier, on the subject of the recommendation which the Council proposed to submit to Government, and after a discussion in which Col. Strachey, Mr. Oldham, Col. Douglas, Mr. W. T. Blanford and other members joined, it was resolved that the Council be empowered to address Government in furthrance of the general objects advocated in the Report; but instead of a Board of visitors of the Calcutta Observatory, to recommend the appointment of a meteorological Committee, for the purpose of making suggestions on the best practical way of promoting those subjects.

The following report of the Phil. Committee was recommended by the Council and adopted.

REPORT.

The Philological Committee recommended to the Council that Pundit Nabadwip Chunder Goswami's offer be accepted to edit the prose Sankara-dig-Vijaya of Anantánanda Giri. The Society, last year, accepted a proposal to edit the poetic version by Mádhava, as it seemed at that time hopeless to obtain MSS. of the prose work, but the Secretary has lately obtained several MSS. through Dr. Hall and pundit Lingam Laksmoji of Vijayanagaram, and the printing of Mádhava's work, which had just commenced, has been stopped; and