GREAT SUN SPOTS. 309 



else finds that in another region the reverse holds. 

 And when it is further found that in some regions no 

 such effects at all can be discerned, many find nothing 

 disheartening in that. Still, it must be remembered 

 that antecedently this sort of evidence was certain to 

 be obtained whatever period had been dealt with ; 

 .looking over a short range of time, one would be sure 

 to find some places where the weather seemed to agree 

 in one way with the period (any period whatever), other 

 places where the weather seemed to agree in just the 

 opposite way, and yet others where there seemed to be 

 no agreement at all. And when we learn that as our 

 survey ranges over time as well as over space, there 

 appear similar diversities, the places which had seemed 

 to agree one way or another no longer agreeing, it 

 seems a little too much to ask men to believe that 

 there is a, real connection, but that while one place is 

 affected one way, another is affected in the opposite 

 way, and that as time passes, the effects vary. With 

 such scope for difference and variation, a pack of cards, 

 shuffled at random, might be shown to agree with 

 weather cycles (red cards for fine weather, black ones for 

 bad, or vice versa ad libitum}. Weather predictions 

 guided by sun spots would be no better, in that case, 

 than predictions based on coin-tossing suggested by Sir 

 Edmund Beckett. 



Times. 



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