38 PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 



pond with the solar spot-cycle, we may perchance find some 

 such cycle in the relative rainfall of particular months, or in 

 the varying wetness or dryness of particular winds, and so 

 forth. Or, if we utterly fail to find any such relation in one 

 place we may find it in another, or not improbably in half-a- 

 dozen places among the hundreds which are available for the 

 search. If we are content with imperfect correspondence 

 between some meteorological process or another and the 

 solar-spot cycle, we shall be exceedingly unfortunate indeed 

 if we fail to find a score of illustrative instances. And if we 

 only record these, without noticing any of the cases where 

 we fail to find any association whatever in other words, as 

 Bacon puts it, if " we note when we hit and never note when 

 we miss," we shall be able to make what will seem a very 

 strong case indeed. But this is not exactly the scientific 

 method in such cases. By following such a course, indeed, 

 we might prove almost anything. If we take, for instance, 

 a pack of cards, and regard the cards in order as correspond- 

 ing to the years 1825 to 1877, and note their colours as 

 dealt once, we shall find it very difficult to show that there is 

 any connection whatever between the colours of the cards 

 corresponding to particular years and the number of spots 

 on the sun's face. But if we repeat the process a thousand 

 times, we shall find certain instances among the number, in 

 which red suits correspond to all the years when there are 

 many spots on the sun, and black suits to all the years when 

 there are few spots on the sun. If now we were to publish 

 all such deals, without mentioning anything at all about the 

 others which showed no such association, we should go far 

 to convince a certain section of the public that the condition 

 of the sun as to spots might hereafter be foretold by the 

 cards ; whence, if the public were already satisfied that the 

 condition of the sun specially affects the weather of particular 

 places, it would follow that the future weather of these places 

 might also be foretold by the cards. 



I mention this matter at the outset, because many who 

 are anxious to find some such cycle of seasons as Sir John 



