very sudden. Care is needed to avoid a chill and the
fever that follows. Clear and dry though the air is, the blue of the
skies is pale owing to a light dust haze in the upper atmosphere. For
the same reason the Himalayan snows except after rain are veiled from
dwellers in the plains at a distance of 30 miles from the foot-hills.
The air in these months before the winter rains is wonderfully still. In
the three months after Christmas the Panjab is the pathway of a series
of small storms from the west, preceded by close weather and occurring
usually at intervals of a few weeks. After a day or two of wet weather
the sky clears, and the storm is followed by a great drop in the
temperature. The traveller who shivers after a January rain-storm finds
it hard to believe that the Panjab plain is a part of the hottest region
of the Old World which stretches from the Sahara to Delhi. If he had to
spend the period from May to July there he would have small doubts on
the subject. The heat begins to be unpleasant in April, when hot
westernly winds prevail. An occasional thunderstorm with hail relieves
the strain for a little. The warmest period of the year is May and June.
But the intense dry heat is healthier and to many less trying than the
mugginess of the rainy season. The dust-storms which used to be common
have become rarer and lighter with the spread of canal irrigation in the
western Panjab. The rains ought to break at Delhi in the end of June and
at Lahore ten days or a fortnight later. There is often a long break
when the climate is particularly trying. The nights are terribly hot.
The outer air is then less stifling than that of the house, and there is
the chance of a little comparative coolness shortly before dawn. Many
therefore prefer to sleep on the roof or in the verandah. September,
when the rains slacken, is a muggy, unpleasant, and unhealthy month. But
in the latter half of it cooler nights give promise of a better time.

~Special features of Plain Zones.~--The submontane zone has the most
equable and the pleasantest climate in the plains. It has a rainfall of
from 30 to 40 inches, five-sevenths or more of which belongs to the
monsoon period (June-September). The north-western area has a longer and
colder winter and spring. In the end of December and in January the keen
dry cold is distinctly trying. The figures in Statement I, for
Rawalpindi and Peshawar, are not very characteristic of the zone as a
whole. The ave