nevertheless, the presumption is that it would, and were it possible to overrun the Punjaub with forest or vegetation more rain would fall, and the climate would be cooler.
As to the seasons of the Punjaub, they are nearly similar to those in upper India. The crops of wheat and barley, &c. being cut down in April, and those of the hot season in October.
The climate of the Punjaub does not seem favourable to animal life, especially of those parasite classes that frequent large cantonments in the north-west provinces. Mosquitoes are few, as well as fleas and bugs, white-ants, and ants in general; lizards, scorpions, jackdaws, hawks, vultures, jackalls, are far below the average; but flies, (the commonblack-fly), fire-flies, sand-flies, and crickets, swarm in every house. By means of good chicks the house-fly may be kept at bay,but the sand-fly abounds in every room. Though mere phantoms of material creatures, imperceptible to the ear and nearly so to the eye, and best discovered by their own shadow on the wall,and so fragile as to be broken into pieces by the stroke of a horse's hair, yet their bite is like the prick of a red-hot needle; and so venomous that the part swells to the size of half a cherry, remaining for days intolerably itchy, and requiring the greatest self-restraint to refrain from tearing it open: without noise, their assaults are unheard; their size
