AN ESSAY ON SOUTHERLY BURSTERS. 139 



bursters. Shows that duration and strength of bursters have 

 wide ranges. Gives a sketch of the Pampero. Traces different 

 kinds of bursters, their rate of progress along the sea coast and 

 relation to general weather conditions. Gives detailed description 

 of two bursters with diagrams of weather before and after, and 

 photographs of clouds, also full notes of cloud changes. Gives 

 diagram and short note about the most violent burster ever known 

 on the coast. Gives tabular particulars of all the bursters that 

 have taken place between September 1863 and March 1894. 

 Showing the number in each hour of the day in each month and 

 in each year, and the total number nine hundred and ninety-one 

 which have been recorded, the prevalence in each month in each 

 year with the greatest velocities of wind and the mean velocities, 

 etc., also a diagram showing the relation of the number of bursters 

 in each hour of the day to the temperature curve. 



THE PRIZE ESSAY. 



In the early days of Australian settlement, when the shores of 

 Port Jackson were occupied by a sparse population and the region 

 beyond was unknown wilderness and desolation, a great part of 

 the Haymarket was occupied by the brickfields from which Brick- 

 field Hill takes its name. 



A BRICKFIELDER. 



When a "Southerly Burster'' struck the infant city its approach 

 was always heralded by a cloud of reddish dust from this locality, 

 and in consequence the phenomenon gained the local name of 

 " brickfielder." The brickfields have long since vanished and with 

 them the name to which they gave rise, but the wind continues to 

 raise clouds of dust as of old under its modern name of " Southerly 

 Burster." A consideration of the earliest reliable records, and a 

 comparison of them with these of later times, appears to prove 

 that the phenomenon itself, as well as its surroundings, has changed. 



SIXTY MILES PER HOUR. 



Even up to within ten or fifteen years ago the velocity of wind 

 was frequently as high as sixty miles per hour, and occasionally 

 attained the tremendous force of eighty miles — on one memorable 



