a sudden
shift of wind, fallen 13 degrees in 15 minutes.]

My observations on this extreme heat, succeeded by so rapid a change, were
that of all animals, man seemed to bear it best. Our dogs, pigs and fowls,
lay panting in the shade, or were rushing into the water. I remarked that a
hen belonging to me, which had sat for a fortnight, frequently quitted
her eggs, and shewed great uneasiness, but never remained from them many
minutes at one absence; taught by instinct that the wonderful power in the
animal body of generating cold in air heated beyond a certain degree,
was best calculated for the production of her young. The gardens suffered
considerably. All the plants which had not taken deep root were withered by
the power of the sun. No lasting ill effects, however, arose to the
human constitution. A temporary sickness at the stomach, accompanied with
lassitude and headache, attacked many, but they were removed generally in
twenty-four hours by an emetic, followed by an anodyne. During the time it
lasted, we invariably found that the house was cooler than the open air,
and that in proportion as the wind was excluded, was comfort augmented.

But even this heat was judged to be far exceeded in the latter end of the
following February, when the north-west wind again set in, and blew with
great violence for three days. At Sydney, it fell short by one degree
of what I have just recorded: but at Rose Hill, it was allowed, by every
person, to surpass all that they had before felt, either there or in any
other part of the world. Unluckily they had no thermometer to ascertain its
precise height. It must, however, have been intense, from the effects it
produced. An immense flight of bats driven before the wind, covered all the
trees around the settlement, whence they every moment dropped dead or in a
dying state, unable longer to endure the burning state of the atmosphere.
Nor did the 'perroquettes', though tropical birds, bear it better. The
ground was strewn with them in the same condition as the bats.

Were I asked the cause of this intolerable heat, I should not hesitate to
pronounce that it was occasioned by the wind blowing over immense deserts,
which, I doubt not, exist in a north-west direction from Port Jackson, and
not from fires kindled by the natives. This remark I feel necessary, as
there were methods used by some persons in the colony, both for estimating
the degree of heat and for ascertaining the cause of its