PHYSICS OF THE GLOBE. 35 



tern was a thousand years ago in full operation, both in India 

 and Ceylon, but has long since fallen into neglect. 



Balfour Stewart has a very excellent paper in the pro- 

 ceedings of the London Royal Society, concluding that 

 there is a slight balance of evidence in favor of a connec- 

 tion between atmospheric and solar phenomena. 



Professor Langley, of Pittsburgh, as the result of a careful 

 approximate calculation of the direct effect of sun-spots on 

 terrestrial temperatures, shows that the least change in the 

 mean annual temperature of the globe in the course of an 

 eleven-year spot period is not less than one twentieth of a 

 degree centigrade, and the greatest change is not greater 

 than three tenths of a degree. In this estimate he only con- 

 siders the direct effect of the diminished radiation of the 

 spots, and can conclude nothing as to other, perhaps more 

 important, changes, of which the spots are merely accompa- 

 niments. 



RELATIONS WITH METEORS. ' 



The meteors that encounter our atmosphere certainly com- 

 municate to its upper layers the heat due to the sudden 

 stoppage of their motion, but of the exact amount of this 

 heat we have but very indefinite ideas. A contribution to 

 our knowledge of this subject has been made by Govi. 



A remarkable meteor was visible from Kansas to New 

 York on the evening of the 21st of December, 1876, and ap- 

 proximate determinations of its movements have been pub- 

 lished by Kirkwood, Abbe, and Newton ; the latter states 

 that previous to encountering the earth's atmosphere it 

 must have been coming from a point near to and a little 

 south of the ecliptic, in the southern or eastern part of the 

 constellation Capricornus ; he solicits additional observa- 

 tions from those who saw this meteor, as he hopes to con- 

 tinue his study thereupon. 



CLIMATOLOGY. 



The climate of Chili is treated by Hann in an excellent 

 resume of the volumes of observations published by the Cen- 

 tral Meteorological Office at Santiago, 1868 to 1872. The last 

 volume is, he says, the most complete meteorological annual 

 report that has as yet appeared from any part of America. 



The climate of the Fiji Islands, as based on meteoro- 



