588 



NATURE 



[April 24, 1879 



ened the original curved row of spots to a straight bar, is 

 most strikingly shown by the two foremost spots of the 

 row which are unsymmetrical with regard to the corre- 

 sponding row on the front wings, and which really form 

 the commencement of a curved bar, but these are hidden 

 by the overlapping of the front win^s. 



Thus it was perhaps the selection of males by the 

 females that first perfected the Medea type among the 

 progenitors of the genus. Later on the males of some of 

 the species may have been completely modified (as with 

 E. acontius). while the females retained their peculiar 

 pattern (by reciprocal selection or by sexually limited 

 inheritance ?) down to the present time. 



In conclusion, attention is directed to the scent-secret- 

 ing organ of Epicalia acontius as compared with that of 

 another butterfly belonging to a quite different group, 

 viz., Antirrhcea archaa, the organ being almost identical 

 in these two widely-separated species, and thus affording 

 a striking instance of what is well known to evolutionists 

 as "analogy," in contradistinction to "homology." 



R. Meldola 



SUN-SPOTS AND COMMERCIAL CRISES 



I HAVE been repeatedly told by men who have good 

 opportunity of hearing current opinions, that they 

 who theorise about the relations of sun-spots, rainfall, 

 famines, and commercial crises are supposed to be 

 jesting, or at the best romancing. I am, of course, 

 responsible only for a small part of what has been put 

 forth on this subject, but so far as I am concerned in the 

 matter, I beg leave to affirm that I never was more in 

 earnest, and that after some further careful inquiry, I am 

 perfectly convinced that these decennial crises do depend 

 upon meteorological variations of like period, which again 

 depend, in all probability, upon cosmical variations of 

 which we have evidence in the frequency of sun-spots, 

 auroras, and magnetic perturbations. I believe that I 

 have, in fact, found the missing link required to complete 

 the first outline of the evidence. 



About ten years ago it was carefully explained by Mr. 

 J. C. OUerenshaw, in a communication to the Manchester 

 Statistical Society {Transactions, 1869-70, p. 109), that 

 the secret of good trade in Lancashire is the low price of 

 rice and other grain in India.' Here again some may jest 

 at the folly of those who theorise about such incongruous 

 things as the cotton-mills of Manchester and the paddy- 

 fields of Hindostan. But to those who look a little below 

 the surface the connection is obvious. Cheapness of 

 food leaves the poor Hindoo ryot a small margin of 

 earnings, which he can spend on new clothes ; and a 

 small margin multiplied by the vast population of British 

 India, not to mention China, produces a marked change 

 in the demand for Lancashire goods. Now, it has been 

 lately argued by Dr. Hunter, the Government statist of 

 India, that the famines of India do recur at intervals of 

 about ten or eleven years. The idea of the periodicity of 

 Indian famines is far from being a new one ; it is dis- 

 cussed in various previous publications, as, for instance, 

 "The Companion to the British Almanack for 1857," 

 p. 76. The principal scarcities in the North-Western 

 and Upper Provinces of Bengal are there assigned to the 

 years 1782-3, 1792-3, 1802-3, 1812-13, 1819-20, 1826, 1832-3. 

 Here we notice precise periodicity up to 181 2-1 3, which, 

 after being broken for a time, seems to recur in 1832-3. 



Partly through the kind assistance of Mr. Garnett, the 

 Superintendent of the British Museum Reading Room, I 

 have now succeeded in finding the data so much wanted 

 to confirm these views— namely, a long series of prices of 

 grain in Bengal (Delhi). These data are found in a 

 publication so accessible as the Journal of the London 

 Statistical Society for 1843, vol. 6, pp. 246-8, where is 

 printed a very brief but important paper by the Rev. 



'■ This view is confirmed by the opinion of Mr. E. Helm, as given in the 

 Transactions of the same society for i8<8-9, p. 76. 



Robert Everest, chaplain to the East India Company, 

 " On the Famines that have devastated India, and on the 

 Probabihty of their being Periodical." 



Efforts have, I believe, been made by Dr. Hunter, Mr. 

 J. H. Twigg, and probably others, to obtain facts of this 

 kind, which Avould confirm or controvert prevailing 

 theories ; but this little paper, which seems to contain 

 almost the only available table of prices, has hitherto 

 escaped the notice of all inquirers, except, indeed, Mr. 

 Cornelius Walford. The last number of the Jo7ir7ial of 

 the London Statistical Society contains the second portion 

 of Mr. Walford's marvellously complete account of " The 

 Famines of the World, Past and Present," a kind of 

 digest of the facts and literature of the subject. At pp. 

 260-1 we find Everest's paper duly noticed. In this latter 

 paper we have a list of prices of wheat at Delhi for 

 seventy-three years, ending with 1835, stated in terms of 

 the numbers of seers of wheat — a seer is equal to about 

 2 lib. avoirdupois — to be purchased with one rupee. As 

 this mode of quotation is confusing, I have calculated the 

 prices in rupees per 1,000 seers of wheat, and have thus 

 obtained the following remarkable table : — i 



1763 

 1764 

 1765 



1766 

 1767 

 1768 

 1769 

 1770 



1771 



1772 



1773 

 1774 

 1775 

 1776 



1777 

 1778 

 1779 

 1780 

 1781 

 1782 

 1783 

 1784 

 1785 

 1786 



1787 

 1788 

 1789 

 1790 

 1791 

 1792 

 1793 

 1794 

 1795 

 1796 



1797 

 1798 

 1799 



Price of Wheat at Delhi 



22 



23 



25 



65 M. 



48 c. 



33 

 31 

 28 



36 



40 



250. 



28 



44 



43 



30 



23 c 



28 



41 



39 



42 



46 



38 



35 



33 



39 



39 c- 

 48.M.C 



30 

 22 

 21 

 21 

 26 

 22 

 33 



40 M. 



25 



— C. 



The letter M indicates the maxima attained by the 

 price, and we see that up to 1803, at least, the maxima 

 occur with great regularity at intervals of ten years. Re- 

 ferring to Mr. Macleod's "Dictionary of Political Eco- 

 nomy," pp. 627-8, we learn that commercial crises 

 occurred in the years 1763, 1772-3, 1783, and 1793, in 

 almost perfect coincidence with scarcity at Delhi. M. 

 element Juglar, in his work, " Des Crises commerciales, 

 et de leur Retour periodique," also assigns one to the year 

 1804. After this date the variation of prices becomes 

 for a time much less marked and regular, and there also 

 occurs a serious crisis about the year 1810, which appears 

 to be exceptional ; but in 1825 and 1836 the decennial 

 periodicity again manifests itself, both in the prices of 

 wheat at Delhi and in the state of English trade. The 

 years of crisis are marked with the letter C. 



J 



