LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

Southland Times, Issue 1643, 4 October 1872, Page 3

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

IHE W RATHER. SIR, — The weather of New Zealand is said to be so changeable and uncertain that do one can j form any estimate beforehand of its general character. I therefore eend you the following i observation?, for the consideration of those of your readers who take some interest in, but have ' riot given mu'.'h uttertion to, such matters. Were any one to examine into the vitrio'is causes which apparently infiupnee the weather, he could see no concisions in those of one year which are not similar, or nearly so, to those of any other year, and he might naturally conclude that the seasons respectively of each year would bi- elike. Experience, however, teaches us very differently ; (or we see that in our own day, as in the days of a certain Egyptian king, there ar^ good years and bad years ; —year?, sometimes a succession of them, w heroin, the yield of farm produce — say in England — is far below the average, and the wrecks on the coast from storm at sea far above; and flint, not as a. consequence of the weather of nivv particular day or month, but of the general character of the 'whole season, whole year, or whole period. And these phenomena have not been confined to the present age of the world, but hare been a characteristic of past a2es very remote from the present. I have in my possession a piece of fossil wood said to have be^n found at Bushy Pomt — a few miles distant from this-in which three o1 the annual rings are broad, and ten, immediately following, j narrow, then two broad rings, and further on, I narrow ones, showing that the years represented by the broad rings were much more favorable to the growth of the tree than were the ten intervening years represented by the ten narrow rings. I recollect that the late Hugh Millar mentions somewhere that he found near Cromurty (in Scotlan.), a piece of a fossil tree of the Devonian age, having some of its annual rings broad, and some narrow, affording evidence that at that early period the yearly seasons were as dissimilar to ea;h other as they are now — a period removed so far from the present, that, according to certain reasonings of Sir Charles Lyell, it may be a hundred and eighty millions of years a^o. Now, although I am of opinion that this want of uniformity in the corresponding seasons of a great number of years in past agfs as well as the present, may be mainly attributed to subterranean causes, it would be idle in me, with the limited knowledge which I possess, to speculate on their nature. I merely, in writing this, desire to point out as my opinion, that certain peculiar or abnormal states of places on the earth's surface sometimes exist, and that they are not fortuitous accidents brought about by mere combinations of circumstances, but that they are of a fixed and settled character, lasting, sometimes for months, sometimes for years, and that, so long as t'.iey endure, they will operate on the weather of certain places for good or for ill. If this supposition be correct, and if the ordinary weather at a given place under normal conditions were known, and if, at the same time, some knowledge of the bent or tendency of the disturbing agency could be ascertained, a roigh. knowledge of the general character of the weather, lor perhaps a long period, might be arrived at. As a meaus ot getting this knowledge, there are two periods in every year at which the atmosphere over the whole globe is in a perturbed state, namely, the latter part of March and also Of. September ; or, say, from a week before to three weeks after the eiui has crossed the .Equinoctial line. When that event haa passed, the pole deprived of the direct rays of the sun for the previous six months, is then lighted up by them — and these circumstances are reversed to the pole opposite. The monsoons, likewise, all change about that time, and during ttiis general atmospheric derangement, nature, on some occasions, as it were, lifts the veil, and reveals the tendency of an abnormal agency interfering with the ordinary course of tlie weather at a given place. I will suppose, for example, that in last March I had wished to obtain some knowledge of the protable general character of the weather during the en>uing winter months. I would have required first to know the direction the winds should come from, under ordinary circumstances, apart from any continental or local influences, which, in the latitude of Southland, should be strong breezes from between north-west and south-west all the year round. The reason assigned lor this, according to the theory of the winds generally received, is : that tha trade winds, having acquired the rapidity of the earth's diurnal motion at the equator, after being pushed southward in the higher regions of the air, get cooled, and fall to the earth, and, not having entirely lost their equatorial motion, travel in advance of the smaller circles of latitude they fall down on. This is said to be the cause of their westerly direction ; and their varying from northward to southward is simply an exemplification of the mysterious law of nature which requires all her movements to be of an oscillating or intermittent form. Belore a body of the winds in question first strikes the earth, it ib often impelled suddenly

downwards, while retaining the direction it held on its way from th.? tropics — but, on the down - ward oscillation ceasing, the wind at the earth's surface is eraduallv drawn again towards the north, to fiil up the vacancy caused by the ordinary tropical trade, winds. Tlie latitude of Southland happens to br within the belt which these re-aruntr trade -winds full down on, and as a consequence of that, strom; westerly winds should b? the prevailing weather. Now, if about the time of the last March equinox, no opposing influence, or rather, one favorable to such weather, had exhibited itself, it might have been inferred that the winter would be such as happened in '62 and '6:? — sale aftpr gale from the westw.rd. But what in reality took place? FasferlT winds and ci'tn«, nnd an entire' absence of wcsterlv wind*, from tin; 9th o\ March to the 29th. and although in April there happene l several breeze^ from the westward, they were of short durition, the prevailing- weather being easterly winds and c-ilms. The easterly winds, too. were of so marked a character, that they could not have been produced by any local or temporary cause ; for, on enquiry, I found that one, at lea*t, of the easterly gales reached all the way from New Zealand to Australia. Would it I not, therefore, have been reasonable for an ' observer to conclude that such a powerful exhibition of orposing agency must belong to something of a fised character, and would yet show itself for months to come? So satisfied was I that such must be the. case, that I did not hesitate (in the month of April) to request several gentlemen, residents of Southland, to note the weather during the winter, as it would bn remarkable for its comparative absence of westerly winds, and its numerous easterly winds and calm weather, — and I think the issue has entirely answered my expectation. It carried with it one peculiarity, however, I which I did not forcfee— namely, an unusual degree of cold, with accompanying snow-fall — and my inability to foresee that, arose, perhaps, from this circumstance, that my observations of the weather at the time of the equinoxes, although they extend over a period of thirty years, were made with the view only of discovering the prevailing direction of the winds, and their probable force, and did not extend to other phenomena, such as temperature, rain-fall, &c. This arose partly from want of means and opportunity, and partly from the pressure of other occupations, which made me overtook any information which waa not much required in my occupation as a seaman. Although I must confess that the idea I am [ about, to offer is new to myself, I may be permitted to hazard an opinion as to the cause of the cold weather lately, and great snow-fall — which may be received or rejected as the reader feels inclined. Thus, I have stated above that Southland lies within the space whereon the rej acting trade winds, under ordinary circumstances, should fall. If, th?n, the due quantity did not fall in this latitude, it must have fallen somewhere else, for ths sun's rays near the equator never cease to rarify the atmosphere, and send it off north and south in the higher regions of the air. What, I would ask, would be the effect of its falling in higher latitudes than usual ? Probably, to be cooled below its ordinary temperature, and as it must eventually find its way to the tropics ajjain, to carry along with it an extra degree of cold, to be distributed along its path northwards. It may be part of this extra cold which we have felt, and a consequence of it may have brought the snow. Another consequence of those windi falling down on higher latitudes would be, that as the diurnal motion of the smaller circles would be less rapid, the winds would travel the greater in advance of it, and therefore blow with the greater violence. Could this supposition account for the furious gales in high latitudes which bo ninny of the homeward bound ships have lately experienced ? Whether there be any truth in this theory or not, there could be no harm in shi'.im-isters keeping it it 1 , nand, when leaving this for England at a future time, under circumstances such as I have pointed out happened last March. It might be expected of me, before closing, to make some remark on the indication of weather whi.-h the present equinox i« giving, but it would be premature to speak with any degree of cert-tin ty before another fortnight or three werks. My object in writing at the present time is to give those desirous of doing so opportunity of ohservitig and ju 'ging for them sol yes. I may, however, say this much, that I can already observe the existence of the disturbing agency (although evidertlj lessening in intensity), whicii has been at work all winter. The winds have been mostly fro>n the westward during the last week or fortnight, but they have been of short duration and light in force, and the barometer has ranged high, all tending to foreshadow a mild summer. To those who desire to speculate further than I have gone regarding the causes of the winds and weather, I would request them to bear in mind that the arguments which might be used in reference to the winter months, may not be applicable to tho<e of summer, for from the September equinox to the March, the vertical rays of the sun are all poured down on this side of* the equator. The sun is nearest to the earth in December, and also, the aun being on its perihelion passage, the time from the September equinox to the March is eight days less than the opposite six months. These circumstances make the summers hotter and shorter, or rather, the winters longer and colder than the winters in the northern hemisphere. I should like to see some of your thinking correspondents take up this subject, and prosecute it to a greater length than I have the ability to go, for, if no other good 3bould come from it, it would at least interest some of your readers. — I am, &c, J- B. Geeig. Bluff Harbor, 25th September, 1872. ■^