86 H. C. RUSSELL. 
to do that amount of good which we should expect from the 
quantity measured. 
Unfortunately, one cannot, as a rule, learn the area of these 
storms, but many circumstances, such as the absence of the same 
heavy rain at neighbouring stations indicate the fact, and some- 
times they .cover only a small part of one station. I may 
illustrate what I mean, both as to the area covered by the rain 
and the immense quantity that comes down, by the experience of 
a friend, Mr. L. 8S. Donaldson, in 1869, on page 87. 
One of the most remarkable and best known rain storms inland 
occurred in the end of January, 1885, when we were right in the 
middle of A drought. The storm came in at the north-west 
corner of the colony, and travelled thence in an east south-east 
direction, straight across New South Wales to the sea, depositing 
from six to eleven inches ina day and a half as it passed on. 
From the central line of heaviest rain, which passed over 
Wilcannia, the quantity of rain fell off rapidly, so that at Bourke 
-the river rose only four feet, while at Wilcannia it rose twenty- 
eight feet ; but the rain messenger having made his way over the 
colony, drought again took possession, and it did not break until 
the middle of the year 1886. 
Just nineteen years before this storm of 1885, a very similar 
storm passed over Bourke in January, 1866 (again in A drought); 
very heavy rain fell, but the river did not rise much, although 
the rain lasted two days, showing that the rain area was small. 
Nineteen years before this there is no record (i.e., in 1847) of 
what took place in the then unoccupied Darling Country, but it 
is worth mentioning as evidence so far, that there was such @ 
storm in the West, that an exactly similar storm passed over the 
Paterson River on January 17th, 1847, just as the one in 1889 
passed over Lake George and deposited eight inches of rain theres 
at the Paterson, it rained so heavily during the day that the 
river rose higher than it had been for some years before. 
I have already alluded to the recent (February 1896) rain 
‘storm over Bourke and the Bogan country and its remarkably 
* 
