IRature ■|l•1otes : 
tEbe Selbovne Society’s aDagasine 
No. 78. 
JUNE, 1896. 
VoL. VII. 
A DRY NEW ZEALAND SUMMER. 
LTHOUGH it is generally supposed that New Zealand 
has a much smaller rainfall than Britain, this is not so ; 
along a great stretch of country on the east coast of 
the North Island the rainfall is heavy and the wet 
days frequent. 
For instance, during the past year I registered on four occasions 
in the twenty-four hours 5- inches, 5-17, 570, and 7‘30, and as 
much as i6’30 in one month. After four or five successive wet 
summers in the very broken lands of this district, the shaded 
ravines and valleys and the cold southward-facing slopes become 
quite unfit for grazing purposes. The growth of low shrubs, 
such as manuka [Leptospermiim scopariiim) and tauhinau [Poma- 
derris ericifolia), stunted fern and long rank grasses provides 
shelter and harbour to all sorts of sheep parasites. 
The number of sheep, too, is lessened, or they are carried on 
a restricted area, thereby increasing the sheep sickness of the 
soil. All these — and they are serious evils in climates where 
frosts are rare and light — are remedied by a few weeks of un- 
broken hot dry weather. 
Sometimes the drought sets in after a last heavy flood, and 
sometimes the weather steadies slowly down after diminishing 
thunder showers. Southerly gales that rush up without an 
hour’s warning, instead of — as in wet seasons — bringing sudden 
deluges, now carry only a skiff of big drops and a sudden breath 
of coolness, or at most a few points only of rain. A crack of 
clear appears to the windward, and the scurrying clouds pass 
away once more into blue. Then, as the weeks go on, the rain 
seems to find it more and more difficult to reach the earth. 
