Opening Address. 9 



•scattered over this and the neighbouring colonies should be col- 

 lated and compared with the atmospheric temperature and 

 pressure at each place. Similar returns should be procured from 

 New Zealand and New Caledonia, and from the Jog-books of ships 

 navigating the intermediate seas. Daily wind charts ought to 

 be constructed, showing the direction and force of the wind at as 

 many points as possible, and including readings of barometer and 

 thermometer wherever practicable. If such laborious work were 

 continued for some years we should then be in a favourable posi- 

 tion for framing a theory of our winds, and for tracing the origin 

 and progress of storms. The summer and winter winds of Sydney 

 are on the whole so regular as to partake of the character of mon- 

 soons, and they ought to be as susceptible of satisfactory explana- 

 tion as are the monsoons of the India and China seas ; but so far as I 

 know such an explanation has not yet been given. As Sydney 

 lies outside the southern margin of the S.E. trades the normal 

 wind ought to be north-westerly, and the winter winds of Sydney 

 may be essentially of this character, although some modifying in- 

 fluence, which I am unable to indicate, causes them frequently to 

 -come from W. and S.W. When we go farther south, to Hobart 

 Town for instance, the north-west wind blows for three-fourths 

 of the year. The north-east wind of summer upon our coast is 

 more puzzling. May it be a compound of return trade wind and 

 sea breeze ? The return trades ought to be north-westerly, and 

 a true sea breeze ought to blow from about E.S.E. The former 

 wind may give the northerly element to our summer wind, and 

 the latter the easterly element ; in other words, the return trade 

 instead of reaching the earth's surface as a north-west wind gets 

 turned round by reason of the heating effect of the sun upon the 

 land, and strikes our coast from the north-east. What seems to 

 add probability to this is the fact that during the night in summer, 

 or rather towards morning, a land wind commonly blows from 

 west ; this dies away by 9 o'clock, and is succeeded by the north- 

 east wind. 



Lieutenant Growlland has given a very good account of the 

 winds on our coast, and the following are extracts from his 

 paper : — " The prevailing winds on the coast of New South 

 Wales may be said, as a general rule, to blow from the N.E. 



