560 Tra )i met ion s . — Misce I laneo us . 



New Zealand that condition in most places would be fulfilled 

 — then the prevalent winds would be the rain-|Dringers, par- 

 ticularly if they came from a lower to a higher latitude. The 

 north-east of Clmstchurclx seems an exception to this rule, 

 and, I confess, it is to me an inexplicable wind. It may not, 

 however, be so dry as it appears, and its peculiar power to 

 affect human seusations may be owing to some electrical pro- 

 perty arising from its opposing the revolutionary motion of 

 the earth. Perhaps it is quite local and is more of the nature 

 of a tropical sea-breeze, particularly as it always seems to 

 gather extra force and virulence towards the afternoon. Or it 

 may be a diverted south-east — i.e., polar — wind, drawn out of 

 its course by the warm Canterbury plains, with their excessive 

 radiation. Moreover, it must be remembered that it does not 

 strike directly against mountain-sides, but, before it reaches 

 them, has to blow over a wide extent of land. 



Combining now the results obtained in the previous tables, 

 and ignoring for the present what has been said as to prevalent 

 winds, the rain-bringing winds seem to be at — 



N. 



Now, if the results which we have thus obtained for five 

 places widely separated, and mostly on the eastern coasts, 

 though exposed to western weather, may be taken as indica- 

 tive of the rain-bearing winds generally in the colony, as I 

 think is the case, and if the general law may be deduced from 

 the figures of a few^ consecutive years, as I think it can, and 

 if we may assume that the wind recorded at 8 o'clock in the 

 morning was in the great majority of cases the wind which 

 prevailed while the rain of each day was falling — for there is 

 no tri-daily observation here as in the Old-World'observatories 

 — then it would appear that without doubt the wind which 

 brings most rain in New Zealand is the south-west. ^Ye see 

 that it comes first everywhere in the table except at Welling- 

 ton and Nelson. We considered the peculiar north-east rains 

 of the latter place in Part I. of this paper; and the heavy 

 south-east rains of the former place are a purely local 

 phenomenon. They are really south-west rains — the result 

 of cyclonic storms sweeping up the eastern coasts of the 

 South Island, but diverted by the direction of the mountains 

 bounding the eastern entrance to Cook Strait. Similar 

 diversions of wind by the configuration of the land are very 

 common in our colony, abounding as it does with gorges and 

 river-valleys hemmed in by lofty mountains — e.g., at the 

 Eakaia Gorge, at the head of Lake Wakatipu, and elsewhere. 



