1890. | VEEDER—FORCES IN DEVELOPMENT OF STORMS. 59 
anti-cyclones were few. The conditions were very similar in Europe, 
the season there also being regarded as abnormal and characterized by 
unusual mildness over wide areas far north. The last period of sunspot 
minimum, the winter of 1879-80, had similar characteristics, the 
unusually mild winter in the United States in that year being equally 
memorable with that just passed. At the minimum of 1856 the anti- 
cyclonic belts were slightly further north than during the past winter, 
the result being steady cold over the central part of the United 
States, while it was unusually warm in Labrador. 
In the equatorial regions, and during summer, the persistence of 
anti-cyclonic conditions produces drouths. Thus, during the profound 
sunspot minimum of 1877-78, the persistence of anti-cyclones in low 
latitudes was made strikingly manifest by the phenomenal drouths 
which encircled the entire earth in those years. Such drouths are most 
seriously felt as a rule in parts of India and China at times of sunspot 
minimum because of the peculiar situation of those countries in 
reference to these belts of dry anti-cyclones, whose track across conti- 
nents is marked by deserts, and across oceans by rainless areas, which 
oscillate more or less northward and southward in eleven-year periods. 
This periodicity is not, however, perfectly uniform and free from 
interruption. The fact of its existence has been established by a 
system of averaging, which involves the smoothing out and obliteration 
of the more transient departures from the normal. Thus at a time of 
profound sunspot minimum there may be brief outbreaks of increased 
activity which are concealed in the process of averaging. At the 
beginning of last March, for example, there was a marked but brief 
revival of solar activity, the largest sunspots seen thus far this year 
appearing and being located farther north on the disc than any that 
have been seen in many years, thus probably marking the very earliest 
indication of the beginning of a new eleven-year cycle. 
It is precisely these exceptional variations from the normal that 
are most interesting. At the date in March just mentioned there was 
a most remarkable re-arrangement of atmospheric pressure on a grand 
scale, which was much the more noticeable because of the strong 
contrast with pre-existing conditions. <Anti-cyclones of pronounced 
character, for the first and almost only time during the winter, appeared 
far north in America and Europe, and the severest widespread cold of 
the winter was experienced on both continents, beginning on the 
same day. 
As was pointed out in the discussion before the Academy in regard 
to the aurora, * certain earthfelt effects of solar disturbances become 
*See Page 18. 
