{CLIMATE

355

experience to all whose work lies in them, and once
experienced is not easily forgotten. The early hours of
morning are the only hours when existence is pleasurable;
 the fitful coolness induced by a fall of 10 degrees or
50 in the register of the thermometer is speedily dissipated
as the white-faced sun, seen through a veil of dust, moves
upward into the brassy sky—a sky from which all vestige
of atmospheric blue seems to have been washed out by
heat. Then doors and windows are closed, and as much
of the coolness of the morning as possible is trapped
inside the house to last for another hour or so, whilst the
sun-baking process continues outside. Birds, with their
beaks open and gasping, seek shelter in such shade as
they may find ; cattle gather under the trees, some species
of which, providentially, retain much of their freshness
and give the needed shelter both to birds and beasts ; the
field labourer, who has done the little that is possible
amidst his hard-baked plots in the dark hours of early
morning, retires into the recesses of his mud-brick shanty,
and all the outside world drops into a sweltering doze till
the sun gradually sinks and disappears again.
The monotony of the long wearisome day is varied
by speculations about the wind. Will it be strong enough
and will it be hot enough to carry a draught through the
soaking screen of “kuskus” grass which is set up on
edge at the doors or windows in order to distribute a
life-sustaining current of coolness through the house ?
The hot wind usually sets in about 10 A.M, and lasts till
4 P.M, and on its regularity depends a good deal of the
comfort of European mankind. No artificial invention
successfully takes its place as a powerful agent in evaporating
 moisture and inducing a cool current of air thereby.
With it the temperature of a well-managed house may be
reduced to 80° F. or thereabouts. Without it the thermometer
 in the shade of the bungalow and in the shadow
of the garden trees will register much the same, i.e. anyhing
 between 90° and 110° according to the locality.
Ihe punkah does not of course affect the air temperature.
 It merely affects the temperature of the skin