SOUTHERLY BURSTERS. 55 



or merely the general drift of the atmosphere cannot be decided 

 but as it was noticeable at night I should incline towards the 

 latter hypothesis. No atmospheric current, apart from these two, 

 was observed at any time, except when an agitation was remotely 

 visible overhead between the two, due to vertical uprising or 

 lowering of either one or the other. In these rare instances the 

 clouds moved in all directions. 



There were fewer opportunities for observing the upper strata 

 after the burst than while the northerly winds prevailed, but 

 when the conditions permitted observation the cloud movements 

 generally tended from due west. I do not, however, feel inclined 

 to commit myself more definitely on the subject of cloud aspects 

 since the observations from which these statements are deduced 

 are for one season only, and that season an eminently unfavourable 

 one for the collection of useful data. 



The question whether bursters arrive here by preference at any 

 particular hour, and whether such hour varies from year to year, 

 as well as the average number for each hour, the percentage of 

 the whole that came at each hour seem' to me best answered by a 

 diagram and 



TABLE I. 



In Table No. 1, all the bursters that have been recorded at 

 Sydney from September 30, 1863 to March 31, 1894, are grouped 

 together so that they can be seen at a glance, all the bursters that 



NUMBER IN EACH HOUR AND YEAR. l 



are on record for each year, and for each hour of the day, also 

 the total number at each hour for the whole period, and the per- 

 centage of bursters that have taken place at each hour in figures 

 and in diagram. Each stroke in the table represents a burster, 

 where several bursters have occurred at the same hour there is a 

 group of strokes, and the eye catches at once those hours in each 

 year in which bursters have been most frequent, the greatest 



1 See also at the foot of Diagram m., page 58. 



