n the branches and thirsty brushwood. The insects,
deprived of their accustomed food, disappear underground or hide beneath
the decaying bark; the water-beetles bury themselves in the hardened mud
of the pools, and the _helices_ retire into the crevices of the stones
or the hollows amongst the roots of the trees, closing the apertures of
their shells with the hybernating epiphragm. Butterflies are no longer
seen hovering over the flowers, the birds appear fewer and less joyous,
and the wild animals and crocodiles, driven by the drought from their
accustomed retreats, wander through the jungle, and even venture to
approach the village wells in search of water. Man equally languishes
under the general exhaustion, ordinary exertion becomes distasteful, and
the native Singhalese, although inured to the climate, move with
lassitude and reluctance.

Meanwhile the air becomes loaded to saturation with aqueous vapour drawn
up by the augmented force of evaporation acting vigorously over land and
sea: the sky, instead of its brilliant blue, assumes the sullen tint of
lead, and not a breath disturbs the motionless rest of the clouds that
hang on the lower range of hills. At length, generally about the middle
of the month, but frequently earlier, the sultry suspense is broken by
the arrival of the wished-for change. The sun has by this time nearly
attained his greatest northern declination, and created a torrid heat
throughout the lands of southern Asia and the peninsula of India. The
air, lightened by its high temperature and such watery vapour as it may
contain, rises into loftier regions and is replaced by indraughts from
the neighbouring sea, and thus a tendency is gradually given to the
formation of a current bringing up from the south the warm humid air of
the equator. The wind, therefore, which reaches Ceylon comes laden with
moisture, taken up in its passage across the great Indian Ocean. As the
monsoon draws near, the days become more overcast and hot, banks of
clouds rise over the ocean to the west, and in the peculiar twilight the
eye is attracted by the unusual whiteness of the sea-birds that sweep
along the strand to seize the objects flung on shore by the rising surf.

At last the sudden lightnings flash among the hills and sheet through
the clouds that overhang the sea[1], and with a crash of thunder the
monsoon bursts over the thirsty land, not in showers or partial
torrents, but in a wide deluge, that in the course