A tear's "WEATHER. 399 



2oth, a loud and long clap of thunder about lo o'clock at night. 

 2ist, two claps of thunder about half-past two p.m. 23rd, 

 Rain-gauge quite full, 5^ inches deep. 26th, the sun of this day, 

 which was brilliant, a welcome guest, and so great a stranger that 

 every countenance seemed cheered by his friendly and benign 

 aspect. 29th, the rain of yesterday, accompanied by close and 

 sultry air, has contributed more to injure the grain than any of the 

 preceding weather. Wall fruit has little flavour. Apples fall off 

 and are insipid. The greatest part of the grain remains in the 

 field. Summer fallows in sad plight. The leaves of the turnip 

 turn yellow. Fall of rain 7-8 inches. Only four days during the 

 month on which it did not rain. 



Surely we have need to rejoice in comparison to our ancestors 

 of one hundred years ago with a September rainfall nearly six 

 inches in excess of our experience for the same month this year. 



October 26th, 1892. 



OCTOBER. 



A glance down the weather sheet shews a repetition 

 of cloud character of a somewhat ominous nature, for the word 

 nimbus — rain cloud — occurs with much frequency, for three weeks 

 out of the four we had constant records of this class of cloud, and 

 rain fell on 22 days. The month came in very wet, "85 of an inch 

 of rain, the second day being also wet, the two days giving one 

 hundred and twenty tons of rain to the acre ; on the 6th and 7th, 

 we had nearly one hundred tons, and between the 24th and 27th 

 nearly two hundred tons of rain over a similar area. Our total 

 downpour for the month was yjo inches, which is in excess of 

 Mr. Davey's record for Kennal Vale (4*34) by i'^6 inches, about 

 one inch and one third. 



Heavy as the rain seemed, it was only about two-thirds of the 

 rainfall of October last year. We often have heavy October rainfalls 

 of 6 or 7 inches, and in 1865 we had one with over 9 inches of rain. 

 Our average rainfall for the month is 4"8o inches. 



In addition October was cold. We had frost on eleven nights 

 under cover, and on some of these nights it registered on the 

 exposed thermometers 7 degrees of frost. As a rule at such times 

 there is apt to be great ranges of daily temperature, which do great 



