6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IIO 



the solar constant. If in any column it happens that fragments of 

 sequences remain representing periods of prevailingly high solar 

 constant, and in another column the fragments which remain repre- 

 sent prevailingly low periods of the solar constant, the two means are 

 not comparable. Unfortunately the mean at the hurricane day is 

 among the weakest in table 4, having fewest observations, only 8 out 



Fig. I. — Mean solar-constaiit values preceding and following first reports of 

 West Indian hurricanes. Abscissae, days before and after report dates ; ordinates, 

 solar-constant values, to be prefixed by 1.94. 



of 17 cases reporting. Despite the paucity and raggedness of these 

 data, they tend, on the whole, in the same sense as table 3. That is, 

 the solar constant tends to decrease before the hurricanes, and does 

 not quite recover to its former average value within 12 days after- 

 ward. 



Although we may wish that stations better even than Montezuma 

 might have been available, so that solar-constant values could have 

 been more accurate and more complete, the results of this investiga- 



