This violence, however, seldom lasts more than an hour or two, and gradually abates after intermittent paroxysms, and a serenely clear sky supervenes. For some days, heavy showers continue to fall at intervals in the forenoon; and the evenings which follow are embellished by sunsets of the most gorgeous splendour, lighting the fragments of clouds that survive the recent storm.
[Sidenote: Wind S.W. Temperature, 24 hours: Mean greatest 85.8° Mean least 74.4° Rain (inches) 6.8]
_June_.--The extreme heat of the previous month becomes modified in June: the winds continue steadily to blow from the south-west, and frequent showers, accompanied by lightning and thunder, serve still further to diffuse coolness throughout the atmosphere and verdure over the earth.
So instantaneous is the response of Nature to the influence of returning moisture, that, in a single day, and almost between sunset and dawn, the green hue of reviving vegetation begins to tint the saturated ground. In ponds, from which but a week before the wind blew clouds of sandy dust, the peasantry are now to be seen catching the re-animated fish; and tank-shells and water-beetles revive and wander over the submerged sedges. The electricity of the air stimulates the vegetation of the trees; and scarce a week will elapse till the plants are covered with the larvæ of butterflies, the forest murmuring with the hum of insects, and the air harmonious with the voice of birds.
The extent to which the temperature is reduced, after the first burst of the monsoon, is not to be appreciated by the indications of the thermometer alone, but is rendered still more sensible by the altered density of the air, the drier state of which is favourable to evaporation, whilst the increase of its movement bringing it more rapidly in contact with the human body, heat is more readily carried off, and the coolness of the surface proportionally increased. It occasionally happens during the month of June that the westerly wind acquires considerable strength, sometimes amounting to a moderate gale. The fishermen, at this period, seldom put to sea: their canoes are drawn far up in lines upon the shore, and vessels riding in the roads of Colombo are often driven from their anchorage and stranded on the beach.