B. TERRESTKIAL PHYSICS AND METEOROLOGY. 123 



may seem to be needed. Dr.AYojeikoff' s present visit to 

 this country promises thus to be turned to good advantage, 

 and his extensive acquaintance with the meteorology of the 

 Russian dominions insures that the winds of that country 

 will be very fully represented in the forthcoming work. 



STOKM CHARTS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN". 



The Meteorological Office at London has published a series 

 of charts and abstracts of the logs of about thirty vessels, 

 showing the weather prevailing for the eleven days ending 

 February 8, 1870. This is "a lirst attempt at the style of 

 work which is needed to connect the excellent observations 

 now being taken in America with those of Europe." These 

 charts show that during these eleven days iive rotatory 

 storms developed on the American coast, and moved north- 

 eastward to points north of the British Islands, bringing, 

 of course, almost continuous southwest winds and warm 

 weather to the latter. 



ON SOLAR SPOTS AND PERIODICAL RAIN-FALL. 



The remarkable paper of Mr. Lockyer, in which he an- 

 nounced that the chief feature of the meteorology of the 

 future should be to seek for meteorological cycles, such as 

 the eleven-year sun-spot period, and in which he shows the 

 existence of an eleven-year cycle in the cyclones of the In- 

 dian Ocean, has called forth excellent responses from various 

 meteorologists, who are disposed to be more cautious in their 

 reasonings than Mr. Lockyer seems to have been. The emi- 

 nent Austrian meteorologist, Jelinek, following the laborious 

 methods of the true inductive philosoj^her, has compared a 

 long series of observations of rain-fall with the corresponding 

 observations of solar spots. His conclusion is that wiiile cer- 

 tain few localities show an agreement between the years of 

 maximum rain-fall and of greatest number of spots, yet the 

 majority do not do so. If, however, each epoch of maximum 

 or of minimum be counted separately, he finds for European 

 stations fifty-two cases favorable and forty-two unfavorable 

 to the hypothesis that there is a connection between the two 

 classes of phenomena. Jelinek concludes, very much as Lock- 

 yer and Symons seem to have done, that the southern hem- 

 isphere may possibly be specially favorable to the solar-spot 



