5* PLEASANT WAYS IN SCIENCE. 



troscopes. For what, in the first place, has been shown as to 

 the connection between meteorological phenomena and sun. 

 spots ? Supposing we grant, and it is granting a great deal, 

 that all the cycles referred to have been made out They 

 one and all affect averages only. The most marked among 

 them can so little be trusted in detail that while the maximum 

 of sun-spots agrees in the main with an excess or defect of 

 rain or wind, or of special rains with special winds, or the like, 

 the actual year of maximum may present the exact reverse. 

 Of what use can it be to know, for instance, that the three 

 years of least solar maculation will probably give a rainfall 

 less than that for the preceding or following three years, if the 

 middle year of the three, when the spots are most numerous 

 of all, may haply show plenteous rainfall ? Or it may be 

 the first of the three, or the last, which is thus well supplied, 

 while a defect in the other two, or in one of the others, 

 brings the total triennial rainfall below the average. What 

 provision could possibly be made under such circumstances 

 to meet a contingency which may occur in any one of three 

 years ? or, at least, what provision could be made which would 

 prove nearly so effective as an arrangement which could 

 readily be made for keeping sufficient Government stores at 

 suitable stations (that is, never allowing such stores to fall at 

 the critical season in each year below a certain minimum), 

 and sending early telegraphic information of unfavourable 

 weather ? Does any one suppose that the solar rice-grains are 

 better worth watching for such a purpose than the terrestrial 

 rice-grains, or that it is not well within the resources of 

 modern science and modern means of communication and 

 transport, to make sufficient preparation each year for a 

 calamity always possible in India ? And be it noticed that 

 if, on the one hand, believers in solar safety from famine may 

 urge that, in thus objecting to their scheme, I am opposing 

 what might, in some year of great famine and small sun-spots, 

 save the lives of a greater number than would be saved by 

 any system of terrestrial watchfulness, I would point out, on 

 the other, that the solar scheme, if it means anything at all, 



