SUN-SPOT, STORM, AND FAMINE. 31 



the sun, as he travels from east to west every day, has any 

 special effect on the weather. It seems so natural to us to 

 recognize in the sun's greater mid-day elevation and longer 

 continuance above the horizon in summer, the cause of the 

 greater warmth which then commonly prevails, that we find it 

 difficult to believe that men could ever have been in doubt 

 on this subject Yet it is probable that a long time passed 

 after the position of the sun as ruler of the day had been 

 noticed, before his power as ruler of the seasons was re- 

 cognized. I cannot at this moment recall any passage in the 

 Bible, for example, in which direct reference is made to the 

 sun's special influence in bringing about the seasons, or 

 any passage in very ancient writings referring definitely to 

 the fact that the weather changes with the changing position 

 of the sun in the skies (as distinguished from the star- 

 sphere), and with the changing length of the day. " While 

 the earth remaineth," we are told in Genesis, "seed-time 

 and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, 

 and day and night, shall not cease;" but there is no refer- 

 ence to the sun's aspect as determining summer and winter. 

 We find no mention of any of the celestial signs of the 

 seasons anywhere in the Bible, I think, but such signs as 

 are mentioned in the parable of the fig tree "When his 

 branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that 

 summer is nigh." Whether this indicates or not that the 

 terrestrial, rather than the celestial signs of the progress of 

 the year were chiefly noted by men in those times, it is 

 tolerably certain that in the beginning a long interval must 

 have elapsed between the recognition of the seasons them- 

 selves, and the recognition of their origin in the changes of 

 the sun's apparent motions. 



When this discovery was effected, men made the most 

 important and, I think, the most satisfactory step towards the 

 determination of cyclic associations between solar and terres- 

 trial phenomena. It is for that reason that I refer specially 

 to the point In reality, it does not appertain to my subject, 

 for seasons and sun-spots are not associated. But it admir- 



