Citizens Say—

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1011, 30 June 1930, Page 8

Citizens Say —

(To the Editor.)

THE CLERGY I am in entire accord with your correspondent “Indignant Layman,” in his protest against “Wesleyan’s” letter. I know of several clergymen in the Auckland province who have the greatest difficulty in budgeting to make their tiny stipends buy the barest necessities of life. I do not know one clergyman who exactly fits thd description given by your original correspondent (although there may be such a one), but I am sure that his generalisations are more than unjust. ALB SETTLING THE LAND Sir, No doubt “Interested” is on the right track when he maintains that those seeking to go on the land and assist in production require financial assistance, or capital, before they can hope to succeed. But the less people look to the Government for assistance the better. I consider that “Interested” is on the right lines when he offers to put £1 into a fund to start people on the land. As he says, his suggestion is crude, but if 1,000 or 500 people could be induced to do as much as “Interested” offers to do, and agreed to put £1 into a pool, the rest would be easy. In the first place we could have ballots for sums of £SO to £IQO, and those who won could repay over a period of say 20 years with say 2J per cent, added for working expenses, etc. I have worked out a whole financial scheme for the regeneration of the world that, could he evolved from a simple scheme of this kind. It would be interesting to know if there are even 100 people among all your readers who would be prepared to but £ 1 into this scheme, provided this gave them the chance of getting the use of £SO for reproductive purposes, with a fresh chance every time the funds accumulated. C. P. IV. LONGDILL. \Y hangarei. , FORECASTING To make more clear what I have just said, let me give an example: If as next Christmas Bay approaches, ’one should wish to judge the sort of weather to be expected that day, let him take note of November 1 (54 days earlier), and more particularly of November 2S (27 days earlier). Should no great solar change follow, to alter the conditions, the former will be a small criterion. and the latter a greater one. The same method of reckoning might not be so reliable for December 28 and the few days following, because (as explained later) ~the opposition of Jupiter on January i 6 will be conducive to earthquakes and j broken weather from December 28. ; This 27-day period will hold good till ! about the end of 1933. when it will | suddenly .increase to 29 or 30 daysj then during the succeeding 11 years | i-t will work back to 27 days. | Unchangeable though the sun seems to us, one cannot consider its workings without realising that, though an everlasting centre of energy, it is like all other material things, inconstant Its energy and the various forces i radiates must fluctuate. It must have its long cycles of life (probablv about ’ 2",1100,000,000 years): and this must be composed of cycles, and series of | cycles, of variation Looking far back j into the past history of the sun, one

finds that, after the birth of the outermost planet (which I still believe to be Neptune), its cycle of variation 1 was millions of years in length, and i that this has ever since been asymp- I totically growing less, in a mann ■ v suggestive of Bode’s Law. As is well known, the sun’s periods j or cycles of variation at this stage I of its life cycle average about 11 years. I repeat this, because in terrestrial phenomena we find so much evidence of changes which correspond with these variation cycles: by considering the sun’s hemispheres separately we should j find many more still. We have only i to examine - the rain-fall records Auckland for the past 80 years to find a distinct connection all through. But, the cycles are not, and cannot be. all alike. They vary in duration and in every other respect. Many have suspected that they run in a definite series, and have tried to find it. Some have noticed in the sun-spot records a slight disposition for the cycles to run in series of seven. This would suggest a cycle of 77 or 78 years in mundane affairs. But there has been ignorance of the sun’s polarity: one wonders why. And the records of both solar hemispheres have always been taken conjointlv. Now we find that, though the work- i ings of the two hemispheres (N. and I fc.) must synchronise in a general way. ! there must otherwise be a remarkable independence of action. And when j we realise how differences of polarity must determine the effects and their j location upon the earth, the import- | ance of studying the solar hemispheres i separately becomes apparent. Would j that I could undertake the task of analysing the solar • have accumulated at Greenwich during the past 250 years. They might bo i made to yield many results of the verv greatest importance to us. There is risk in generalising from the scanty data that has come within my reach. I venture, however, to say that it is usual for the great discharges of force from the N. and S. j hemispheres of the sun primarily to j affect the N. and S. hemispheres of the earth respectively, and that theru j is general correspondence as to lati- i tude This is evidently why it is that tor long periods—occasionally for the whole of a solar cycle (11 years)—we ! a T e a£>t *° get * n one hemisphere of I the earth meteorological, seismic and i other conditions so different from those in the other, suggesting that in j j eaoh hemisphere we should expert ! what the other had 11 years earlier, i This is my chief reason for expecting drought (usually associated with the sun-spot minimum) in this i part of the world, and remarkablv mild and settled weather in the Antarctic I regions, during our summer of 1932-3: such conditions prevailed in the north II years earlier. I find, too, that in epid< mics an 1 other terrestrial phenomena each is specially associated with a certain stage or stages of the solar cycle. Th“ time of sun-spot maximum (eg 1928 and 1939), when the spots are most numerous about latitude 15 favours influenza, heart troubles, rheumatism. mortality among those in the prime of life, certain blights an l many other things besides earthquakes and volcanic activity. And this earthquake season is closely followed l,y unother (luring the period when the sun-spot decline is temporarily arrested. And the third earthquake sea--1 son occurs at sun-spot minimum—os- in 1923 when disaster befell T , nan. It is during this last period. *o o that the reduced vital force is most trving to elderly people, and renders anv shock to the system the more serious. • 1 nnd, too. some disposition fo’- tb«* cycles in each solar hemisphere to run j in series of three and four alternately.

j That being so, I should look. I not only for some repetition of a ll epidemic or anv other nhenormuon | every 11 years, but for .. .-peciSH striking anti local repetition of »* every 33 and 44 years alternately. *1 have alreadv pointed -.* t- recurrent lof plague in Kurope ift an interval of 33 years. (To be continued.) F. U. FIBUI