217 



on Meteorology which has given occasion to Mr. Hopkins's 

 remarks. I would take this opportunity, however, to call 

 the attention of meteorologists to the very extraordinary and 

 abnormal features of the last two years as strongly illustrative 

 of the important part this element of meteorological dynamics 

 has been playing in their production. The great outbreak 

 of the solar spots occurred in the year 1859 with unusual 

 suddenness, and on the 1st of September in that year pheno- 

 mena were exhibited in its photosphere indicative of a most 

 remarkable state of excitement, accompanied with magnetic 

 and auroral disturbances of unprecedented intensity and 

 duration. This occurred as the sun was passing southward 

 across the equator, and from the accounts received from 

 Australia, the southern summer of that year 1859-60 appears 

 to have been one of very unusual heat. The quantity of 

 vapour thrown into the atmosphere during that^summer from 

 the southern ocean would seem not yet to have been got rid 

 of, and to have given rise to diversions of the aerial currents 

 both of air and vapour from their normal courses which have 

 not even yet subsided into their regular and habitual train. 

 I throw out this, however, rather as a suggestion which I 

 consider worthy of further examination by the light of 

 meteorological records and returns collected on a very large 

 scale, than as having myself arrived at any definite concep- 

 tion of the actual steps of the process that has been going 

 forward. 



Mr. Baxendell, in illustration of the remarks in the latter 

 part of Sir John Herschel's communication, read the follovv - 

 ing extract of a letter dated at sea, near Ceylon, January 

 30th, 1862, which he had received from Mr. Thomas Heelis, 

 F.R.A.S., who sailed from England for Calcutta on the 18th 

 of November last : — 



"We have had very peculiar and unsatisfactory trade 

 winds ; we ran down inside of Madeira and the Cape de 



