HAIL STORMS. aT 
battered by the hail, and the fences and buildings bore traces of 
the impact of these great lumps ofice. The stones were generally 
triangular or conoidal in form, many having an uneven surface, 
which looked as if it had been formed from frozen drops of water 
collected into masses ; others had an opaque snowlike centre, per- 
haps the majority were like this, the remainder being like clear 
ice. It was only the larger stones that were irregular as described, 
the smaller ones were generally rounded.” 
At Avondale, thirty miles north of Narrabri, my informant 
Mr. S. J. Dickson, says, ‘From the 9th to the 13th of October, 
the weather was unusually oppressive with threatening storms, 
and on the evening of the 13th a heavy storm was seen to be work- 
ing up from the west accompanied by incessant lightning of every 
description, and about 8 p.m. it broke over the homestead in all 
its fury, the wind was from south-west and of terrific force, and 
_ the rain and hail were very severe. The hail-stones were as large 
as hen-eggs, and in some of the paddocks, one particularly, it. 
pounded the herbage completely out, so that not a vestige of it 
was left, although before the storm came on, it was from six to 
twelve inches high, and in other places strong variegated thistles 
three to four feet high were beaten down. Trees some two feet 
thick, that the wind could not tear up by the roots were snapped 
off short as if made of match-wood. In the storm tie hail killed 
birds innumerable, and even domestic fowls roosting on the trees 
were killed by it, and after the storm, a large snake was found 
cut into two pieces by the hail, so at least it appeared. On the 
open plain the hail laid four to six inches deep, and the whole 
country looked as if a heavy snow storm had passed over it. Trees 
in the track of the hail were completely denuded of leaves and the 
bark knocked off tree trunks and limbs. The storm wind carried 
away outstations, unroofed the hayshed, damaged the woolshed, 
and carried away two sides of the house-verandah, and the sheets. 
of iron from it were found nearly half a mile (30 chains) away to 
the north-east, round wall plates in the hayshed six to eight inches 
thick were broken to pieces, and the iron roofing on all the build- 
