PERIODICITY OF GOOD AND BAD SEASONS. 103 
withstanding this conclusion, I think Mr. Russell has provided 
us with an extremely interesting paper, and I hope that these 
remarks upon its subject-matter do not exceed the limits of fair 
criticism. 
Mr. D. M. Marrtanp, said that in a country dependent almost 
entirely on its pastoral and agricultural interests, the question of 
periodicity of seasons was of vital importance. There were some 
points in the paper, or rather in the diagram illustrating it, that 
he thought required further explanation. The year 1857 was 
shewn as about the middle of a dry cycle, of the D series, but on 
the coast at any rate the rains were very heavy; in June, July, 
and August of that year, there occurred the highest floods of 
which any authentic records had been kept up to that time, those 
present might remember that the ‘“ Dunbar” was wrecked in 
the August of that year. Again in 1866, the year the “Cawarra” 
was wrecked, which is shewn as a dry year in an A cycle, very 
heavy floods occurred. The year he desired to call attention to 
particularly was 1867, (shewn in the middle of a dry cycle) of 
which the rainfall record at the Observatory was sixty-nine and 
a half inches, at Melbourne the same year, the rainfall was above 
the average, and if his memory served him correctly, the register 
at Greenwich also shewed a rainfall higher than usual. That 
year would long be remembered in this Colony, from the fact that 
the most disastrous flood ever experienced in the valley of the 
Hawkesbury took place, the water rising at Windsor to a height 
of sixty-two feet above ordinary level. That year being apparently 
an exceptionally wet one, he would like to know whether its inser- 
tion ina dry cycle was an error or whether the records from other 
Places indicated that the rain supply was so scanty elsewhere as 
to justify its insertion in a dry term, notwithstanding the large 
rainfall in Sydney, Melbourne, and in England. 
Mr. P_N. TREBECK, said that the existence of a nineteen year 
cycle had been referred to by the late Rev. W. B. Clarke, as would 
be evident from the following extract from the Sydney Morning 
Herald of Ist May, 1846 :—“ The Rev. W. B. Clarke in a recent — , 
