Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/107

 cloudy weather occurs in the cold season, sometimes for weeks together, every day betokening rain, but it either ends in a dust storm or a few drops.

The peculiarity of the climate of Lahore, I may say of the Punjaub, is the extraordinary drought that exists throughout the year, so that where artificial means are not used to irrigate the soil, the country becomes a desert,hence the excessive aridity, the dust and heat. It has lately become a speculation whether the absence of vegetation and forest is a cause of drought, or whether in the event of these being increased to a large extent, rain would be more copious. That they stand in the relation of cause and effect, I think most certain, but which takes precedence, I imagine it is very difficult to decide. I have studied the phenomen a of clouds and rain in the Himalayah, but have not been able to trace any difference between what fell on a bare range of mountains and what on a range covered with forest; both seemed to partake of it alike according to their elevation; the higher the mountain the more cloud and rain; not the greater the forest the more rain.

Still we have well authenticated instances, where the cutting down of extensive forests greatly reduced the average fall of rain, but we want the counter argument to prove that the extension of forests added to the humidity of the climate;