SUN-SPOTS AND COMMERCIAL PANICS. 29 



and elsewhere it produces a contrary effect. Yet these 

 effects are produced in a somewhat capricious way ; for 

 sometimes the year of actual maximum spot frequency is 

 one in which rainfall is below the average (instead of above) 

 at the former stations, and above the average (instead of 

 below) at the latter. It is only by taking averages and in 

 a somewhat artificial manner that the relation seems to be 

 indicated on which stress has been laid. 



Since Indian famines are directly dependent on defective 

 rainfall, it is natural that during the years over which 

 observation has hitherto extended the connection apparently 

 existing between sun-spots and Indian rainfall should seem 

 also to extend itseM" to Indian famines. It was equally to 

 be expected that since cyclones have been rather more 

 numerous, for some time past, in years when sun-spots 

 have been most numerous, shipwrecks should also have been 

 somewhat more frequent in such years. Two years ago 

 Mr. Jeula gave some evidence which, in his opinion, in- 

 dicated such a connection between sun-spots and ship- 

 wrecks. He showed that in the four years of fewest 

 spots the mean percentage of losses was 8.64; in four 

 intermediate years the mean percentage was 9.21 ; in 

 three remaining years of the eleven-year cycle that is, in 

 three years of greatest spot frequency the mean percentage 

 was 9.53. Some suggested that possibly such events as the 

 American war, which included two of the three years of 

 greatest spot frequency, may have had more effect than sun- 

 spots in increasing the percentage of ships lost ; while per- 

 haps, the depression following the commercial panic of 1866 

 (at a time of fewest sun-spots) may have been almost as 

 effective in reducing the percentage of losses as the dimin- 

 ished area of solar maculation. But others .consider that we 

 ought rather to regard the American war as yet another pro- 

 duct of the sun's increased activity in 1 860-61, and the great 

 commercial panic of 1866 as directly resulting from dimin- 

 ished sun-spots at that time, thus obtaining fresh evidence 

 of the sun's specific influence on terrestrial phenomena 



