152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the increase of each sun-spot cycle of the same eleven-year duration. 

 The last observed occurrences of such heat-wave, which is very short- 

 lived, and of a totally different shape from the sun-spot curve, were in 

 1834.8,1846.4, 1857.8, and 1868.8; whence, allowing for the greater 

 uncertainty of the earlier observation, we may expect the next occur- 

 rence of the phenomenon in or about 1880.0. The next largest feature 

 is the extreme cold close on either side of the great heat-wave : this 

 phenomenon is not quite so certain as the heat-wave, partly on account 

 of the excessive depth and duration, of the particular cold-wave which 

 followed the hot season of 1834.8. That exceedingly cold period, last- 

 ing as it did through the several successive years 1836, 1837, and 

 1838, was, however, apparently a rare consequence of an eleven-year 

 minimum, occurring simultaneously with the minimum of a much lon- 

 ger cycle of some forty or more years, and which has not returned 

 within itself since our observations began. Depending, therefore, 

 chiefly on our later observed eleven-year periods, or from 1846.4 to 

 1857.8, and from the latter up to 1868.8, we may perhaps be justified 

 in concluding that the minimum temperature of the present cold-wave 

 was reached in 1871.1; and the next similar cold-wave will occur in 

 1878.8." Between the dates of these two cold-waves there are located, 

 according to all the cycles observed, even including that earlier one 

 otherwise exceptional, three moderate and nearly equidistant heat- 

 waves, with their two intervening and very moderate cold-waves, but 

 their characters are quite unimportant. With regard to all the waves, 

 it may be just to state that there has been in observation more uni- 

 formity, and will be therefore in prediction more certainty, for their 

 dates than for their intensities. 



We have thus very briefly surveyed the position of meteorology, 

 and little remains to be said beyond that the results are highly in 

 favor of the hopes of physicists to render meteorology an exact science. 

 Quarterly Journal of Science. 



- 



A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 



HARTMANN'S PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 



TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DUMONT, BY A. R. MACDONOUGH, ESQ. 



I. 



FN an age like ours, when philosophical criticism, applied to all ideas, 

 J- has dissipated most of the fictitious charms lent to existence by the 

 imagination of mankind when the advance of science leads us more 

 and more to look on the world as it is when, no longer able to find 

 consolation in creeds and myths, we grow more closely and constantly 



