CLIMATIC CHANGES THROUGH THE AGENCY OF MAN.

Otago Witness, Issue 929, 18 September 1869, Page 17

CLIMATIC CHANGES THROUGH THE AGENCY OF MAN.

"The ground on which Btands lsmailia, a town of 6000 inhabitants, and the headquarters of M. de Lesseps, was, but a few years since,"- the Bntißh Medical Journal reports, "a dry, sandy desert, on which ram was never known to fall. All is now transformed. The old dried up basin of Lake Timsah has been again filled with water from the Nile by a fresh water canal. Trees, shrubs, and plants of all descriptions grow rapidly wherever the soil is irrigated, and the artificial oasis widens fast. * Accompanying,' writes a correspondent, 'this extraordinary transformation of tho aspect of the place, there has been a corresponding change in the climate. At the present time, Ismailia, during eight months of the year, is probably the healthiest spot in Northern Egypt.' The mean temperature for the four months, June to September, is 94 deg. ; the following four months, 74 deg ; and the four winter months, 45 deg. Until two years ago, rain was unknown ; but in the twelve months ending April last, there were actually fourteen days on whioh rain fell ; and so later than Sunday last there fell a tremendous shower of rain, a phenomenon whioh the oldest Arab has never previously witnessed. Bain ceose3 to fall on a country deprived of its forests, or only falls in violent storms, Here wo see rain returning to the desert on restoring the trees."