114 H. C. KUSSELL. 



the Equator, and are therefore subject to regular distribution, the 

 rains that came on to this coast are often made up of hurricane 

 storms, offsets of equatorial hurricanes of great severity, and 

 therefore are associated with abundance of rain. 



Attempts to plot in diagrams side by side, the storms of the 

 •coast and inland made evident at once the irregularity of coastal 

 rains, and I therefore confined my investigation to the longer 

 records of those inland stations, and I could not but regret that 

 my predecessors had not begun the duty of measuring rain long 

 since. Some few stations in Riverina had fortunately been started 

 there, which assisted very much, more especially one at. Horsham, 

 Victoria, where the observer began to record rain in 1848; our 

 first record at Bathurst began in 1858. 



With the object of eliminating possible errors in the older 

 records, I have as far as possible, taken the average rainfall of 

 neighbouring stations, for instance Bourke and Charlton, Bathurst 

 and Burrundella (near Mudgee), Yanko and Urana, Murray Downs 

 station (near Castle Donnington) and Wanganella station. From 

 all these I have taken the total rainfall for each year, and in 

 accordance with the scale — 5 inches of rain to each vertical space 

 — I have plotted them in, year after year in their proper order 

 and length. The thick vertical lines between 1850 and 1851, 

 1869 and 1870, 1888 and 1889, are 19 years apart, and it was at 

 once evident that it divides these records into natural spaces, in 

 which the first 6 years had abundance of rain. More conspicu- 

 ously is this evident from Yanko and Urana, but it is also a feature 

 in the other lines, and then follow a long series of what has been 

 •called "the dry period," which we are now in. For in this present 

 cycle, the first bad year of the series was 1895 with a poor amount 

 •of rain, which was dried up by hot N.W. winds, and made the 

 period one of very serious loss, and from that on we have had a 

 most serious drought. From the year 1895 to the end of 1900, 

 we have lost twenty-five millions of sheep by starvation, in addition 

 to the death of all the increase during the past six years, which 



