S UN-SPOT, STORM, AND FAMINE. 



DURING the last five or six years a section of the scientific 

 world has been exercised with the question how far the con- 

 dition of the sun's surface with regard to spots affects our 

 earth's condition as to weather, and therefore as to those 

 circumstances which are more or less dependent on weather. 

 Unfortunately, the question thus raised has not presented 

 itself alone, but in company with another not so strictly 

 scientific, in fact, regarded by most men of science as closely 

 related to personal considerations the question, namely, 

 whether certain indicated persons should or should not be 

 commissioned to undertake the inquiry into the scientific 

 problem. But the scientific question itself ought not to be 

 less interesting to us because it has been associated, correctly 

 or not, with the wants and wishes of those who advocate 

 the endowment of science. I propose here to consider the 

 subject in its scientific aspect only, and apart from any bias 

 suggested by the appeals which have been addressed to the 

 administrators of the public funds. 



It is hardly necessary to point out, in the first place, that 

 all the phenomena of weather are directly referable to the 

 sun as their governing cause. His rays poured upon our air 

 cause the more important atmospheric currents directly. In- 

 directly they cause modifications of these currents, because 

 where they fall on water or on moist surfaces they raise 

 aqueous vapour into the air, which, when it returns to the 

 liquid form as cloud, gives up to the surrounding air the 

 heat which had originally vaporized the water. In these 



