194 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



of his own and other researches into this subject. These re- 

 searches now include every portion of the world, and, accord- 

 ing to Meldrum, the rule is almost universal that the years 

 of greater rainfall are the years of greater sun-spot area. In 

 India the irregularities seem to be very great, partly owing 

 to the imperfections of the observations and to the great cli- 

 matic variations, and possibly in part to the empiric and ob- 

 scure nature of the theory. However, the parallelism is com- 

 parable in regularity to the diurnal variation of the barome- 

 ter or the periodicity of the aurora. 



Professor G. F. Becker contributes to the Mining and Sci- 

 entific Press, of San Francisco, of February 2, some tables and 

 diagrams illustrating the periodicity of the rainfall at San 

 Francisco, Sacramento, and Stockton since 1849. He finds 

 evidences of a well-marked thirteen -year period for each 

 place. 



The Variation of the Zodiacal Light in Sympathy with the 

 Sun's Spots is the subject of a short note by Hind, who 

 quotes a letter of Olbers, published in 1839, wherein the va- 

 riation of the zodiacal licrht is mentioned. Modern observa- 

 tions seem to confirm the statement of Cassini, that the zo- 

 diacal lio-lit is much more brilliant when numerous and larffe 

 sun-spots are present. 



The Annuaire of the Bureau of Longitudes for 1878 con- 

 tains, as an appendix, a memoir by Faye, on Cosmic Mete- 

 orology, in which the distinguished author seeks to give a 

 strong proof of the influence of solar spots and other cosmic 

 influences. A criticism of this work, by John Allan Broun, 

 is published in Nature, vol. xviii., p. 128. 



Health. 



An excellent address of Dr. Schreiber, on Meteorology in 

 Medicine, has been translated by Dr. W. II. Geddings, and 

 published in the Richmond and Louisville Medical Journal. 



Some Notes on the Climate and History of New Mexico, 

 by Dr. Thomas A. McParlin, are published in the "Smithso- 

 nian Report for 1877." He gives the views of numerous au- 

 thors on the theory of the influence of hig-h altitudes on hu- 

 man life, and his memoir is full of miscellaneous interesting 

 statistics, including also a letter from J. M. Gough on Elec- 

 tric Disturbances on Telegraph Lines. In reference to the 



