44 Anniversary Address. 



ice lias, within a year or so, taken place from the Antarctic 

 barrier.* 



A south wind during November was the prevailing wind, 

 though, as we learn from the tables of my colleague the 

 Astronomer, a N. E. wind prevailed that month for ten years 

 preceding. 



With this upper wind were combined lower temperature, greater 

 humidity, heavier pressure of the atmosphere, and more abundant 

 rains than were recorded during the same ten years. "When 

 these conditions are taken in relation to the tropical current that 

 sets along our shores, from the heated volume of which has been 

 a great evaporation over an unusually wide-spread surface, we 

 can understand how the cool heavy air above pressing upon the 

 lighter moist strata below may have produced unusual condensa- 

 tion, which, in the production of the rains, has caused those 

 occasional Jieats which were so remarkable in the intervals of the 

 more boisterous stormy gales which we have experienced. 



There has been a great disturbance of the ordinary electrical 

 atmospheric status of the an* ; and without taking into account 

 any local or incidental occurrences — such as the influence of the 

 telegraphic wires or the iron rails now stretching across the 

 colonies, which must have afl:ected in some degree the electric 

 state of the atmospheric strata near the surface, or of the peculiar 

 state of the sun — we may conclude that the present is a period 

 when we are naturally incited to enquire whether we are living at 

 the commencement, or middle, or end of a Cycle in the terrestrial 

 and meteorological movements of Nature. 



. After an examination, long ago, of many thousands of 

 phenomena, I came to the conclusion that at certain intervals or 



* Since this was ■nritten, I hare had mj attention drawn to an announce- 

 ment on the part of the Hydrographer of the Admiralty, of which I had no 

 previous knowledge respecting the Jact that Icebergs were dangerously 

 prevalent on the Cape Horn Koute in November 1869 and for several months 

 before, and I have also received intelligence, that the Swedish Expedition to 

 Spitzbergen had in 1868 met with Ice in an unusually disturbed condition, 

 heavy drifts blocking the coasts, and betraying a disruption. It is not 

 improbable therefore, that my conjecture as to one cause of our present 

 extraordinary seasons in Australia may have been correct. [Jan. 31st, 1871.] 



