Meeson. — The Bainfall of New Zealand. i347 



loss or inconvenience comes from weather of any kind, our 

 agricultural and pastoral fellow-colonists are, as a rule, in- 

 clined to complain, and permit themselves, while experiencing 

 the exceptional, to lose sight of the usual. When the skies 

 for a few months consecutively fail to shower down their 

 customary blessings, it is well for us to remember that, 

 ordinarily, we in New Zealand are exceedingly fortunate as to 

 both the annual amount and the general distribution of rain. 



Among the factors which go to make up the climate of a 

 country — of which heat, atmospherical pressure, wind, and 

 rainfall may be considered the principal— not the least im- 

 portant, whether we take into account its effects on animal or 

 vegetable life, is the rainfall. Not the amount alone, be it 

 remembered : the manner in which the precipitation occurs — 

 in other words, the number of days on which it falls — is almost 

 as important a consideration as the mean annual number of 

 inches. But the amount and distribution of rain, considered 

 together, can scarcely be over-rated as factors producing 

 human happiness. They explain the difference between the 

 comparative barrenness of Australia and the fertility of New 

 Zealand, the soils of the two countries being perhaps, as far 

 as chemical and mineral constituents are concerned, equally 

 good. Not only the productivity of the ground, but the 

 healthy development of animals, whether lower or higher, and 

 the enjoyment of existence by human beings, all depend upon 

 the rainfall audits distribution. 



All the different branches of meteorology are so intimately 

 connected with one another that no single element of climate 

 can be satisfactorily examined by itself. The weight of the air, 

 the pn-'ount of moisture which it contains, the direction from 

 which it comes, the velocity with which it moves, its electrical 

 condition, and its temperature — these things really form the 

 subject-matter of other departments of the science of weather, 

 but they must be considered more or less in connection with 

 the rainfall if we wisli to understand it properly. 



Any investigation of the rainfall of New Zealand, however, 

 must of necessity be imperfect and unsatisfactory, because 

 rain-gauges have been kept and proj^erly used at so very few 

 places and for such a short period of time ; whereas, for mean 

 annual statistics of rain, the greater the number of stations 

 and the longer the period during which observations have 

 been made, the more trustworthy the results will be. How 

 different our position in this respect is from that in other 

 parts of the world will be appreciated when we reflect that 

 there are only three places in our colony where systematic 

 observations are regularly taken by ofQcers paid by Govern- 

 ment, and only nineteen additional places where such obser- 

 vations have been recorded more or less intermittently, and 



