SUN-SPOTS AND FAMINES. 



137 



when taken together should form a well-marked I so far as the number admits, into three equal 

 intermediate group. Dividing the cycle, therefore, I groups of four years, we get the following results : 



TABLE II. 

 Eleven Years' Cycle of Scn-Spots and Rainfall in Madras. 



Has this recurring period of deficient sun-spot 

 and rainfall any practical result on the food-sup- 

 ply of the people ? It is well known that at the 

 end of the last century, and during the earlier 

 years of the present one, Southern India suffered 

 an almost perpetual distress. But for these years 

 we have no rain-register; and the desolation 

 spread by native misrule, together with the drain 

 of food for great armies in the field, sufficed to 

 intensify every local scarcity to the starvation- 

 point. A march of Tippoo Sultan left a worse 

 blight on a district than a dozen inches of defi- 

 ciency in the rainfall ; and Mahratta raids were 

 a more direct and frequent factor of famine than 

 the sun-spots. We are destitute of the first con- 

 ditions for a scientific study of the food-supply, 

 until we reach the period of settled British rule 

 and rain-gauges. 



It would be fruitless, therefore, to extend the 

 inquiry beyond the year 1810, the earliest year in 

 the sun-spot cycles with which we deal. The 

 years of famine at Madras since that date have 

 been 1811, 1824, 1S33, 1S54, 1866, and 1877. 

 These famines were caused by deficient rainfall in 

 the preceding years, namely, in 1810, 1823, 1832, 

 1853, 1865, and 1876. Now, five out of these six 

 years of drought fell within the three years' group 

 of minimum rainfall and sun-spots shown in the 

 foregoing tables; the remaining drought (1853- 

 '55) extended over a year immediately preceding 

 the minimum group and two years within that 

 group ; the famine itself resulting within the min- 

 imum group. Three of the six years of drought 

 fell exactly in years of minimum sun-spots ; one 

 fell in the year preceding a year of minimum sun- 



spots ; one fell in the second year preceding a year 

 of minimum sun-spots ; the remaining drought, 

 1853-'55, fell in the first, second, and third years 

 preceding a year of minimum sun-spots. 



There have been other years of scarcity in 

 Madras. But the above six years were selected 

 by Sir William Robinson, sometime acting gov- 

 ernor, as the years of true famine, without any 

 acquaintance with the writer's speculations on 

 the rainfall, or of any cycle being supported or 

 djsproved by them. No famine in Madras has 

 been recorded from 1810 to 1877, caused by a 

 drought lying entirely outside the minimum group 

 of sun-spots and rainfall (as shown in the fore- 

 going tables). The only drought which could be 

 claimed as an exception, 1853-55, extended over 

 two years within the group and the year immedi- 

 ately, preceding them. It is shown as an excep- 

 tion in Table III. 



The foregoing statistics refer to the single sta- 

 tion of Madras. They are, however, of special 

 value for testing the coincidence between sun-spot 

 frequency and the rainfall, which the northeast 

 monsoon brings to Southern India. For that mon- 

 soon strikes the land with all its first vigor at Ma- 

 dras. By the time it crosses the Eastern Ghauts, 

 and finds its way to the central plateau, it has got 

 rid of the aqueous burden which it has carried down 

 the bay of Bengal. To the table-land of Mysore it 

 brings only eight inches, while at Bellari and in 

 Hyderabad it only supplies three. But even at My- 

 sore a deficiency of rainfall in years of minimum 

 sun-spots is disclosed. Of four years of minimum 

 sun-spots for which materials exist (1S76 to 1S37), 

 not one had quite the full annual rainfall ; and the 



