206 ' Ww. E. ABBOTT. 
evaporation, however, is sufficiently great to exhaust it before it 
reaches these channels and outlets. All at once from causes of 
which as yet we have-no accurate knowledge, the atmospheric 
conditions are changed. The whole country is covered with a 
moist atmosphere in which evaporation almost, if not wholly, 
ceases. ‘Then the conditions are reversed in the spongy sources 
of our creeks and springs. Evaporation having ceased, the water 
from the upper and thicker parts of the sponge soon works down_ 
ward and resaturates the lower shallow parts and consequently 
reappears in the creeks and at the outlet of the dried-up springs. 
This explanation seems to me to embrace all the facts covered 
by my observation, but’ whether the breaking out of springs and 
increased flow of water in creeks in time of drought is an indica- 
tion of the near approach of its termination or not, is a matter 
which cannot be decided off hand. That an extremely dry 
atmosphere is a characteristic of drought periods, we know, but is 
it the cause of the drought? We also know that in a general 
drought which covers half or all Australia there are always small 
areas not suffering therefrom, and the situation of these areas vary 
in different droughts. For example, that Bourke, which has not 
suffered this time, will also escape in the next drought is very 
unlikely, from what we know of the past. What I would be 
inclined to infer is, that when the outburst of springs and increased 
outflow of creeks is confined to a small area of the country in 4 
general drought, it is not an indication of a break up as small 
local changes are common to every drought. When however, the 
outflow of water covers a wide area or the whole of the drought 
stricken country, then it is to be regarded as the indication of the - 
near approach of the end, since the most distinctive characteristic 
of a general and widespread drought—an extremely dry atmosphere 
—has disappeared. 
