Punkas (also called pankasor tankas) are apparatus that serve for fanning rooms throughout the entire extent of English India. These devices consist of a light wooden frame covered with canvas, from the bottom of which depends a fringe. These frames are suspended from the ceiling in such a way as to occupy nearly the entire width and length of the room. To the base of the frame is attached a cord which passes over a wheel, and which is pulled by a Hindoo domestic. After the frame has been lifted, a weight fastened to the lower part causes it to fall back again. The result of the continuous motion of this colossal fan is a coolness that is highly appreciated in a country where the temperature is at times incredibly high, and where, without the factitious breeze created by the punka, living would not be endurable. This breeze prevents perspiration, or evaporates the same as soon as it is formed. Sometimes it sinks to a light zephyr; then, if you are reading or writing, you may continue your work, but in a distracted way, with a moist brow, and with a feeling of annoyance that soon makes you leave book or pen. [Illustration: FIG. 1.--TENT OR TABLE FAN OR PUNKA.] Looking around you, you find the punka immovable. The bahi still holds the cord that pulls it, but it is because he has tied it to his hand. He has gently slid to the floor in a squatting posture. He is asleep and you are burning. A vigorous exclamation brings him to his feet all standing, and he begins to pull the punka with all his might, and you have a feeling of ease and coolness. It is like the passage from an attack of fever to a state of comfort in an intermittent disease. So the punka is seen everywhere--in the temple and court room and other public places, as well as in private dwellings. It is one of the first things to astonish the European upon his arrival in India, and it is not long before he has to bless the happy invention. Although, in a country where the temperature generally reaches, and even often exceeds, 40° C., it is absolutely necessary to obtain by every means possible a factitious coolness without which the Indies would not be habitable for Europeans; and although there is no hesitancy in putting up these punkas everywhere to be maneuvered by bahis, the elevation of the temperature is not such in France that we are obliged to have recourse to such processes. But, without being forced thereto by nature, it is none the less true that we are often the more incommoded by heat in that we are not accustomed to it, and that in southern France, at certain hours of the day, such heat becomes absolutely unbearable. We can, it is true, obtain a little air by moving a fan, but, aside from the fact that this exercise soon becomes tiresome, it prevents the use of the hand that is fanning. [Illustration: FIG 2.--AN APARTMENT FAN.]