I exceptional causes of the tlryiiess and purity of the Aus- tralian air. Home ascribe it to the effect of a depresaed and generally dry interior, others to the insular position, the great Southern Oeean, and the unimpeded courses of the trade-winds. Many eanses, no doubt » concur. I The amount of rainfall is not inconsiderable on the east coast and in the cordillera. In Sydney the average is twice as ranch as in London. In Melbourne it equals that in London. But at uncertain periods drought afflicts the land. The streams disappear on their slow course to the interior; the herbage i« burnt to a colour browner than stubble. Where cattle and sheep depend for water only on what they find at a natural stream or pool even the dry stalks disappear in the neighbourhood. The weaker animals cainiot travel to j the foud, becoming more distant daily by trampling and consumption; they sink in the mud at the head of the diminishing; water, and are too weak to struggle out of it. The}' die, and then* unburied corpses taint the air. One I great accession to the pasturing capacity of Australia was brought about by dividing ** runs,*'* with fences, and (by damming up watercourses or sinking wells) shortening the distance which live stock traversed to obtain water.** When tbe count iy is parched by drought, the setting in of a hot wind dismays the inhabitants. Meteorologists are still making and comparing observations to account for the violence of this phenomenon. To the sea-coast on the Hunter, at Sydney, at South Australia, and yet more intensely, by contrast with the average temperature, at Victoria, the hot winds sweep with a blast like that of a furnace. A jierson suddenly leaving a substantially built, and therefore a cool house, can hardly believe that the gcorching blast which salutes him is not caused by a
- A run is the general term for the tract of cotmtry on which AuBtraliaiis
keep their stuck, or aUow t]iem to *'run*"
- »Siiit;e the first e<litioii of tliia work was publisbeU in 18H3, a great
chaDgc hnii been wrought in l^Jiicenalaiid, f*Nouth Aiiistraliii, and New South Wales by Ijorjiig artesian wells, in many of which the supply of water Beema exbanstlesa. It ia to be hoped that it may prove so, for by mean? of these weUa eDormous regions where there ia niuob grasa, otherwise unavailable^ are turned to use. The Xew South Wales atatiaticinn mentions one well aa yield hi^ five millions of gaUoiyi dsi.ii'j.
