A Solar Cycle.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8198, 26 May 1906, Page 2

A Solar Cycle.

Soveral meteorologists havo arrived almost Biuiultaneoi'sly at the conclusion that there exists a grand solar cycle of nearly 800 years, within which cxeessivo rains and droughts and other terrestrial phenomena are associated in some countries. Mr W. H. Clough, of the Washington Weather Bureau, has discussed the matter in the Astrophysics! Journal, supporting the argument by reference to periods of aurora*, grape harvest, and the like. Strangolv enough, no country in Europe probably has trustworthy records going back three centuries; for these we must go to China. Mr IvingemiSl, writing from Shanghai, states that the reports of famines in tho northern provinces of China wore much the worst at the ends of the seventh, tenth, thirteenth, and sixteenth eonturies, and this experience of J disastrous drought has been repeated at the end of the nineteenth in China, India, and Australia. In Britain also we had seven years in succession of deficient rainfall. The more exact cycle t.s years, which makes 27 of the smaller recognised cycle " of 11,1)85 years. Possibly Indian annals, if searched, would corroborate this theory for Northern Hindustan. The worst famines or periods of great scarcity recorded in Britain were In i He years 27-, &)G (Scotland), MlO, 7:H>, 823, 051 (Justing four years', 10S7, 1193, 13L5, 135; i, U;is, ir>r>s, ms, 17U5 and 1801. Some of these were occasioned not by drought, but by excess of rain, and no i>oo-year period is traceable