Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/55

] referred to an account of a fall of rain which greatly exceeds that which was recorded at South Head, or I should have had some difficulty in believing that some mistake had not been made in the register. It is stated by M. Arago, that at Joyeuse, in the department of Ardeche, according to the register of M. Tardy de la Brossy, the maximum of rain in a single day, in the course of twenty-three years, was found to have occurred on the 9th August, 1807, and amounted to what then appeared the enormous quantity of 9.87 in.: but, on the 9th Oct., 1827, in the space of twenty-two hours only, there descended at the same place 31.17 inches of rain.

The greatest quantity which fell into our rain gauge in twenty-four hours was 8.52 inches between noon of the 16th and noon of the 17th of July; during the whole of which period the wind was light from the SS.W., and the mercury in the barometer so high as 30.38 inches: it fell to 30 inches when the rain ceased in the afternoon of the 17th.

But far more serious drawbacks to the prosperity of the colony are the occasional withering droughts, which destroy the vegetation in a most awful