76 
a better situation than myself, to take up the question 
and we might now have some further and better results. 
My intended trip to California brought this old inves- 
tigation again vividly before my mind, because of all the 
countries of the world, California, with its old trees, is 
perhaps the one offering the best conditions. I resolved 
to take at least some of my work with me. It might 
help me perhaps in interesting somebody in your country 
in the matter, possibly in inducing him to take up this 
fascinating work, which does not require any very special 
training and may possibly lead to such important results. 
J will not enter into details of my way of treatment. 
It would be tiresome. If anybody of you might ever 
want to take up such a study as this, if he will then take 
the trouble of writing to me, [ will gladly communicate 
to him such expedients und details as experience has 
shown me to be useful. 
There is another point which I wish to bring up before 
Ï enter on my subject proper. You may well wonder 
that I, who am an astronomer, am about to speak to you 
on a subject which has nothing to do with astronomy, 
especially on a subject — the regularity in the weather 
in longer periods — on which a great number of compe- 
tent investigators have worked and — though for instance 
Brückner has brought to light traces of some periodicity 
— JÏ think Ï[ am not saying too much, in affirming that 
up to the present very little has been achieved. This 
being the case you may well think it presumptuous in 
me, not a meteorologist, to handle the subject at all. 
My answer to this is: [| have not the least intention of 
starting any new theory or of explaining the phenomena 
to which I wish to draw attention. Î could certainly not 
do it. I wish merely to lay before you some observations 
and to point out some singular regularities in them. Nothing 
would certainly please me so much as that some compe- 
