PERIODICITY OF GOOD AND BAD SEASONS. 85 
he brought under my notice records of droughts, or, as it is there 
termed, “low Nile” on nineteen years. Five belong to A drought 
in our cyele, and twelve belong to D: that is seventeen out of 
nineteen correspond with dry periods in New South Wales, and 
the other two correspond with one of our minor droughts; and I 
see that, in Egypt as in England, their weather change comes 
about a year before ours in Australia. 
BREAKS IN DROUGHTS. 
It is not my purpose to night to go into the details of the life 
of a drought ; I am writing to try and prove to you that there is 
a cycle which rightly understood will be of the utmost value to 
this Colony. At another time I have to go into what might 
be called the personal history of a drought; but there is one 
feature of their history that Dears so strangely upon their 
Periodicity, that I cannot defer it, although this matter more 
correctly belongs to their personal history : I refer to their sudden 
interruption by violent rains extending over small areas; you 
will see in what follows that this is a feature that comes in a cer- 
tain month in each series A and D, and for the moment seems 
to break up the drought, but the drought nevertheless returns to 
omplete its full course. 
This break is a well-marked feature of droughts, and one that 
18 very apt to, and very frequently does, mislead those who do 
hot study the drought asa whole. A very good illustration of 
is has been before us quite recently in this D series. A very 
heavy rain storm came on in February, 1896, in the north-western — 
districts, as much as ten inches falling in a single night nm ~ 
‘Some places. But when one comes to look carefully at the — 
character of the rain, we find that the most marked feature of it 
3S that it is not general, but made up of a series of violent local 
Storms, each confined to small areas, but widely separated 
from one another, and connected only by comparatively light 
Pains; and, further, that these storm-bursts, as they are sometimes > 
Called, discharge the rain so rapidly that it has not time to sink 
: : i Ns but runs away to the nearest water-course, and therefore, fails oe 
