Australian Droughts.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2370, 30 December 1898, Page 3

Australian Droughts.

The New South Wales Government Astronomer, Mr Russell, has written a long treatise on the question of droughts generally, in reply to questions put to the Government recently by Dr Ross, M.P. Mr Russell says that droughts are not confined to Australia. In India the meteorological department traced some, if not all. local droughts to the monsoon winds, and he (Mr Russell) has done the same for New South Wales, ide says the monsoons make or mar the New South Wales climate. Given the monsoon full of moisture, and rain falls abundantly ail over the colony. If the monsogn wind is dry, it is also very strong, sending frequently and persistently strong, hot nor - westers, which bring no moisture, but dry up the country like “veritable siroccos.’ Droughts are the result of special energy, generated in equatorial regions, and distributed the world over by the trade winds and monsoons. The source of this energy, he thinke, is outside the earth, but a full knowlege of it will not be obtained until all countries combine to trace the history of these destructive forces. Looked at from our point oi view, we find it manifested in an unusual velocity of north-west wind, which is capable of bringing down upon us the heated atmosphere of the Equator with very little less heat. Mr Russell has not lost an opportunity for many years of studying the effect of the destruction of forests upon rainfall, and so far as New South Wales is concerned, he says, it is quite certain that the destruction of trees has not decreased the rainfall. Indeed it would seem to have increased it. In recent droughts those parts of the colony which have suffered most intensely, viz, Western Riverina and the Darling, have practically done no ring barking.. All the same, Mr Russeß thinks that even down there the severity of the drought has been exaggerated by contrast with the abundant years of 1889 and 1894. Droughts in the colony have not been so numerous or severe during the past ten years as they have in other periods.