18 Transactions.—Miscellaneous. 
For some years previous to 1872, the antarctic stream came loaded with 
huge islands of ice, to an extent not witnessed by mariners since the route 
round Cape Horn became so frequented a highway as it has been since the 
gold discoveries. 
Navigation in those seas was for a time so extremely perilous that 
insurance companies became alarmed, and many shipmasters sent their 
vessels to struggle back against the westerly winds by the Cape of Good 
Hope. Another great separation of bergs from their parent glaciers, an 
occurrence which has no doubt gone on intermittently in all ages, happened 
in 1829, as related by Sir Charles Lyell. Then, as in these late years, 
many bergs retained the dimensions of islands when they had reached the 
longitude of the Cape of Good Hope; some had nearly circumnavigated 
the globe before they foundered in Australian seas, and one was still many 
miles in length when seen off Cape Leuwin. An excellent opportunity was 
afforded for the conveyance of seeds of the same plants if any are pro- 
duced or remain possessed of vitality in the soil of the lands from which 
they came, to different places in their route, a possibility dwelt upon by 
Mr. Darwin, in alluding to the sprinkling of the same flora in far distant 
regions; it seems probable that had the climate been suitable, plants now 
unknown there might have by this means been brought far up into 
Australia when the land was lower, as there is evidence of bergs having 
been drifted up in former times high into Spencer's Gulf, on the shores of which 
large boulders of foreign rocks have been left by them. There are no data as 
yet upon which to found a theory as to the periodicity of these occurrences, 
which might connect the action of the main-spring which sets the machinery 
in motion, with any of the many causes, magnetic, sidereal, etc., which have 
been proposed as influencing alternating cycles of dry and wet seasons— 
such as the return of Biela’s comet every six and a half years—the time of 
the solar spots every eleven—the twelve-year cycle supposed to have to do 
with the long one of the revolution of the planet Jupiter, ete., etc. How- 
ever this may be, there is every reason for believing that when polar winds 
are more than usually ehilled over certain oceanie areas, they wil blow 
with more force, and mingling with other aerial currents nearer to the 
tropies than in ordinary seasons, condense their moisture. 
Australian climates would be the principal ones affected by such a 
cause, so we find that after the great ice-stream alluded to, the following 
years were wet ones in the then occupied part of New South Wales. 
Again, in 1869, commenced a cycle of splendid seasons for the farmers all 
over the Australias, dry plains were converted into lakes, and steamers 
ascended the tributaries of the Murray more than 1,500 miles. The 
consequences of the ice-stream were also felt in New Zealand, In 
