1 08 Transactions. — JUiscellaneoics. 



Never having heard of hot winds in New Zealand I was consequently the 

 more surprised to find, shortly after my arrival at Christchurch, a strong 

 north-west gale come on to blow, which continued for some days, and 

 seemed to possess a large shai'e of the disagreeable characteristics of the 

 sirocco of Malta and Southern Europe, or the desert winds of Australia, 

 whilst the sky presented the same hard features, the same almost stationary 

 ominous clouds in the uj)per atmosphere, so familiar to travellers in these 

 countries. 



I have used the term " desert winds " to indicate that those are alluded to 

 which blow over the great levels of the continent, although the term is 

 scarcely applicable, as the extent of country actually deserving the appellation 

 of desert is much less than generally supposed. 



On inquiry I found that these winds had been very frequent during the 

 previous months, as they had also been in Australia, and came to the con- 

 clusion, as stated by me in a paper after my return, " That the hot winds 

 which blow over the southern regions of Australia rise above the lower 

 currents, gathering additional moisture as they pass over the intervening sea, 

 and impinging upon the mountain wall of the cordillera of New Zealand, 

 i-apidly discharge their burthen upon its western slopes, and rush dry and 

 blighting over the Canterbury Plains." 



These winds are then really dry when they leave the Australian coast, as 

 may be proved by exposing a tumbler of ice to the current, when the moisture 

 contained even in their lower strata is quickly condensed. They are not so. 

 Peculiar electrical conditions may produce the enormous evaporating power 

 they possess (so injurious to vegetation and disagreeable to the sensations), 

 which those only can well believe who have watched daily with anxious eyes 

 the deep lagoons upon which their safety depends disappearing, not by inches 

 but by feet. 



All the observations and inquiries which I have had an opportunity of 

 making since tend to strengthen my conviction. The theory however does 

 not find favour with several persons whose conclusions are entitled to much 

 weight, as those are which have been arrived at by so diligent and accomplished 

 an observer as Mr. Travers. How he and others who entertain a difterent 

 opinion account for the western coasts of these islands being covered with dense 

 forests, and receiving a rainfall of more than four times the amount annually 

 discharged upon the treeless plains on the eastern side of the main range, I am 

 not aware. Certainly an analogous, indeed almost an exactly similar condition 

 of things obtains in Patagonia, where glaciers descend also through the forests 

 of beech and fuchsia to the sea, as they do nearly in the south island, with the 

 fronds of tree ferns waving over the ice. But these Patitgonian forests 



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