July 9, 1891] 



NA TURE 



225 



height, measured respectively 0-065 by 0-051 inch, 0437 by 

 0-562 inch, and a spherical one had a diameter of 05 inch." 

 Such large hailstones are, I believe, rarely met with in storms 

 near London. This one seems to have been confined to a com- 

 paratively small area, the hail falling in its greatest severity at 

 Leyton, and not extending much beyond Walthamstow, Stratford, 

 West Ham, and here. B. J, Hopkins. 



Forest Gate, E., June 22. 



" An Alphabet of Motions." 

 I HAVE lately found the following extract in Arthur Young's 

 " Travels ii France, in 1787," which I fancy is not generally 

 known. It occurs in Betham Edwards's late edition (Bell and 

 Sons), at p. 96. 



" In the evening to Mons. Lomond. . . In electricity he 

 has made a remarKable discovery. You write two or three 

 words on a paper ; he takes it with him into a room and turns 

 a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is 

 an electrometer, a small fine pith ball ; a wire connects with a 

 similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment ; and 

 his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, 

 writes down the wonis they indicate, from which it appears he 

 has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire 

 makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be 

 carried on at any distance," 



J. S. DiSMORR. 

 Stewart House, Wrotham Road, Gravesend, June 24. 



On a Cycle in Weather Changes. 

 It is known that Prof. Brueckner, of Berne, in a work on 

 " Klimaschwankungen," published a short time ago, offers a 

 large amount of evidence for the view that our globe is subject 

 to a weather-cycle of about 35 years, a series of cold and wet 

 years, or warm and dry ones, recurring at about that interval. 

 Has it been noticed in this connection that Bacon, in one of 

 his essays (No. Iviii. " Of Vicissitude of Things"), makes refer- 

 ence to such a cycle ? The passage is as follows : - "There is a 

 toy which I have heard, and I would not have it given over, 

 but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low 

 Countries (I know not in what part) that every five-and-thirty 

 years the same kind and suit of weathers comes again ; as great 

 frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with 

 little heat, and the like, and they call it the prime. It is a 

 thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I 

 have found the same concurrence." A. B. M. 



THE FORECAST OF THE INDIAN MONSOON 

 RAINS. 



A FTER an interval of twelve mote or less prosperous 

 -^^ years, following on the memorable Madras famine 

 of 1876-77, and the drought and fearful mortality of 

 North-Western India in 1877-78, India seems once 

 more to have entered on one of those prolonged series 

 of adverse seasons which put a severe strain on the 

 protective powers of its Government, and, despite all 

 human precaution, bring suffering, disease, and premature 

 death to thousands of its industrious peasants, and to even 

 larger numbers of the impoverished outcasts who form 

 the lowest fringe of its teeming population, fighting the 

 precarious battle of their life at all times on the verge of 

 destitution. The drought in Ganjam in the autumn of 

 1 889 has been followed by the failure of the late autumnal 

 rains over the central districts of the Carnatic towards 

 the close of last year, and the too familiar machinery of 

 relief works for the able-bodied, and doles of food to the 

 helpless indigent, has been in active operation for several 

 months past in the districts around Madras. Another 

 monsoon, another season of those periodical rains on 

 which depends the fate of millions, is now due and over- 

 due, and there comes from India an ominous note of 

 warning that there is reason to fear that more than one 

 great province of the empire, or certain portions of them, 

 may again this year lie parched and barren, their young 

 crops withering and shrivelled under the dry west wind, 



NO. II 32, VOL. 44] 



while, month after month, men scan with ever-growing 

 anxiety the pale dust-obscured sky and scattered ball- 

 shaped clouds that never mass themselves to rain-clouds, 

 but mock their hopes with the promise of showers that 

 never fall to moisten the sun-baked soil. 



And this warning, alas ! is no mere guesswork of 

 credulous and speculative minds, such as in these lati- 

 tudes certain of our would-be weather prophets love to 

 put forth at hazard, to furnish the topic of a day's gossip 

 to the million, or haply to win for themselves a summer 

 day's reputation with the uninstructed, in the event of a 

 successful issue. Certainty, indeed, there is not and cannot 

 be till science shall have extended its domain far beyond 

 its present limits ; but, in India, the stately march of 

 the seasons is but little obstructed by the vicissitudes 

 of fugitive cyclones and anticyclones, that originate we 

 know not how, and disappear by some concurrence of 

 causes equally beyond our ken. In the tropics, and in 

 the realm of the monsoons, all weather phenomena are 

 more massive and slower in progress, and each great 

 change of seasons is heralded by signs which, if we can 

 as yet but vaguely interpret them, are at least recogniz- 

 able as such, and, with a certain allowance for possible 

 error, must be accepted as timely monitors of what is 

 likely to follow. These it is that, whether rightly or 

 wrongly deciphered, furnish the basis for the present 

 warning. To those who, like the present writer, have 

 followed for many months past, not without anxious in- 

 terest, the telegraphic and other reports periodically 

 transmitted from India, it comes as no surprise, but as a 

 confirmation of misgivings long entertained though only 

 now backed by the warranty of full official evidence. 

 The events of the next three months may yet belie the 

 present indications, and that they may do so is still our 

 fervent hope ; but it would be folly to ignore them, and 

 to shut our eyes to the probabilities that they seem to 

 portend. 



For the last eight years it has been one of the duties of 

 the Indian Meteorological Department, some time early 

 in June, to prepare, for the information of Government 

 and the public, a forecast of the probable character of 

 the summer monsoon, based on the reports of the snow- 

 fall on the Himalaya and the western mountains, and on 

 the indications afforded by the weather of the previous 

 winter and spring. The possibility of framing such a 

 forecast was in a measure foreseen by the Famine Com- 

 missioners appointed by the Home Government after the 

 disastrous famines of 1876 and 1877, of which Commis- 

 sion General R. Strachey, the true founder of the Meteoro- 

 logical Department of India, was the scientific member ; 

 and it is in no small degree due to the weighty advocacy 

 of this Commission that the Department owes its present 

 extension and importance. Mr. Eliot's forecast for the 

 coming season is now before us. It sets forth at length 

 the general and special grounds on which he bases his 

 conclusions ; and these, though duly guarded by the 

 reminder of their essentially empirical character, and of 

 the unavoidable imperfection of our information regarding 

 certain important data, are expressed in terms that leave 

 unhappily no doubt of the adverse character of the out- 

 look. 



Attention was first directed to the apparent connection 

 of the Himalayan snowfall with the prevalence of dry 

 land winds in India, in the year 1877, and about the same 

 lime the late Prof. S. A. Hill and Mr. Douglas Archibald 

 showed that, as a general rule, an unusual cold weather 

 rainfall in Northern India was followed by a deficient 

 rainfall in the ensuing summer monsoon. In a paper 

 published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society in 

 1884, these two classes of facts were shown to be merely 

 different phases of the same phenomenon, and a summary 

 was given of all the evidence on the subject that had 

 been accumulated up to that date. Smce then, there has 

 been but one year of heavy Himalayan snowfall, viz. 1885, 



