SIR MANCHERJEE BHOWNAG-GREE (Bethnal Green, N.E.)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if, with a view to ascertaining the earliest and precise approach of the south-west monsoon in India, he will take steps for the establishment of a meteorological station on the east end of Socotra, which, being 500 miles east of Aden and in the track of the monsoon current, would, through barometrical observations and sea temperatures, afford early indications of the monsoon.
§ LORD G. HAMILTONSo far as I am aware, no proposal for establishing a meteorological station on Socotra has ever been made by the Indian Meteorological Department, and any such scheme would be attended with very great difficulties and drawbacks, on account of the physical circumstances of the islands and the impossibility of transmitting information from it after the preliminary monsoon winds have set in.