Solar Changes of Temperature and Variations in Rainfall. 411 



(8.) We have had the opportunity of showing these results to the 

 Meteorological Reporter to the Government of India and Director- 

 General of Indian Observatories, John Eliot, Esq., C.I.E., F.R.S., who 

 is now in England, and he allows us to state his opinion that they 

 accord closely with all the known facts of the large abnormal features 

 of the temperature, pressure, and rainfall in India during the last 

 twenty-five years, and hence that the inductions already arrived at will 

 be of great service in forecasting future droughts in India. 



Addendum. Eeceived November 16, 1900. 



Since Meldrum and one of us called attention, in 1872, to a possible 

 connection between sunspots and rainfall, there has been a large litera- 

 ture upon the subject which it is not necessary for us to analyse ; it 

 may be simply stated that, in spite of the cogent evidence advanced 

 since, chiefly by Meldrum, and in later years by Mr. Hutehins,* it is 

 not yet generally accepted that a case for the connection has been 

 made out. 



"What has been looked for has been a change at maximum sunspots 

 only ; the idea being that there might be an effective change of solar 

 temperature, either in excess or defect, at such times ; and that there 

 would be a gradual and continuous variation from maximum to 

 maximum. 



At the same time, it is possible that the pressure connection, first 

 advanced by Chambers, is now accepted by meteorologists as a result 

 of the recent work of Eliot. 



The coincidence, during the last few years, of an abnormal state of 

 the sun with abnormal rain in India, accompanied by the worst famine 

 experienced during the century, suggested to us the desirability of 

 reconsidering the question, especially as we have now some new factors 

 at our disposal. These have been revealed by the study, now extend- 

 ing over twenty years, of the widened lines in sunspots, which sug- 

 gested the view that two effects ought to be expected in a sunspot 

 cycle instead of one. 



The Widened Lines. 



It will be gathered from previous communications to the Royal 

 Society! that, on throwing the image of a sunspot on the slit of a 

 spectroscope, it is found that the spectmm of a spot so examined indi- 

 cates that the blackness of the spot is due not only to general but to 

 selective absorption, \ and that the lines widened by the selective 

 absorption vary from time to time. 



* ' Cycles of Drought and Q-ood Seasons in South Africa,' 1 889. 

 t ' Boy. Soc. ?roc.,' TO!. 40, p. 347, 18S6; vol. 42, p. 37, 1887 ; vol. 46, p. 335, 

 1889 ; vol. 57, p. 199, 1894. 



I ' Eoy. Soc. Proc.,' Lockyer, October 11, 1866. 



