The rainy season is productive in another and less pleasant manner. It
is as favourable to insect life as it is to vegetable life. Flying white
ants, flying bugs, and other unwelcome visitors of the same order, come
out in thousands. At night, if the doors be open the white ants make for
the lamps in such numbers that they are extinguished by them, and the
room is in the morning found strewed with their dead. It requires a
torpid temperament to remain calm under this visitation. All dislike it,
and some find it a grievous trial. As the rainy season advances, the
trouble abates, and by the time the cold weather sets in the ordinary
house-fly by day and the mosquito by night alone remain to buzz about
us. The mosquito has rightly got the first place among insect
tormentors. The house-fly is at all seasons, in some more than in
others, and gives not a little annoyance by its pertinacity.

The change at the commencement of the rainy season is delightful. The
doors are thrown open, and the dry, parching wind gives place to a
refreshing coolness. When the rain ceases, the heat returns; the weather
is very muggy, the skin is irritated by the excessive perspiration, and
many suffer more than during the hot season. When the rain is abundant
and frequent, the suffering is much less than when there is little rain
and much sun. There is one comfort at that time: we know we are going on
to the cold weather, which will make amends for all that went before.

I can hardly conceive any country to have a finer climate than that of
the North-West Provinces of India in the cold months. Rain does
sometimes fall during that season; it may fall at any time of the year.
I remember a heavy fall on the first of May, and about Christmas and the
New Year it is eagerly desired for the crops, but ordinarily from week
to week there is an unclouded sky. There is a cool, pleasant breeze from
the west. In the house it is not only cool but cold, so that a little
sunning is pleasant, and at night in December and January, especially
far up the country, fires are welcome. Then Europeans, so far as
circumstances permit, get into the open air and move freely about, with
everything in the climate to favour their travelling.

[Sidenote: THE COLD SEASON.]

The beginning of the cold weather is a very busy season with the
agricultural class, to which the great body of the people belong. If the
rainy season has been favourable, especially if heavy rain has fall