nurse crabtat 3 1 ait a ee! NS 
* Rs, ' yee 
& TROPIC. AL RAINS, <j 
. hay . * 
a consi congderblo fal of ain in th northern ; of Queens 
= aod in fat. that there had been a ag heavy downpour, 
Gate 
reached the mountains, when a cold wind sprang up fromthe 
south-east and all the clouds were blown away. Butforthis ~ 
unfortunate wind we would have had a fair share of rain, andthe 
Colony would thus have been saved from the disastrous conse- 
quences which had followed, in the death, he might say, of millions 
of stock. © The bank of clouds extended at first ina direct line from 7 i 
Bourke to Coonamble, but gradually decreased as it got nearerto 
the mountains. He referred to the heavy rain which fell at the 
breaking up of the long drought in 1878, and which came from the 
‘South-west, he thought, and came to the conclusion that the rain — <a 
depended upon the wind, ‘As the wind prevailed, so the. rain eA: 
prevailed ; if the wind changed suddenly, so the rain disappeared. 
If we only knew how we could control the winds we would be 
_ able to control the clouds ; ‘bat srhathee the winds were controlled 
by heavenly bodies or net, he thought none of them were able 
say. All his observations had tended to the — that ie 
' the rainfall altogether depended upon the course of the w a 
morning the river had risen upwards of 100 feet, but the 
cause of it was that there was a very high embankment, and the 
ascertained that there had been almost as great a rainfall there on 
the Saturday as had fallen in the district around Mr. Thompson’s 
‘Station on the Thursday. That was the greatest coarse he had | 
