SUN-SPOT, STORM, AND FAMINE. 55 



as we are so strongly assured, the most costly observations, the 

 employment of the heaviest guns (and "great guns " are gene- 

 rally expensive), twenty or thirty years of time, and the closest 

 scrutiny and research, to prove that sun-spots affect terrestrial 

 relations in a definite manner, effects so extremely difficult to 

 demonstrate cannot possibly be important enough to be worth 

 predicting. 



side, at a distance of about a year and a half, so that the next such cold- 

 wave is due at the end of the present year [1877]. 



" This is, perhaps, not an agreeable prospect, especially if political 

 agitators are at this time moving amongst the colliers, striving to per- 

 sjaade them to decrease the out-put of coal at every pit's mouth. Being, 

 therefore, quite willing, for the general good, to suppose myself mis 

 taken, I beg to send you a first impression of plate 17 of the forth- 

 coming volume of observations of this Royal Observatory, and shall be 

 very happy if you can bring out from the measures recorded there any 

 more comfortable view for the public at large. 



" PIAZZI SMYTH, 

 " Astronomer- Royal for Scotland." 



If this prediction shall be confirmed [this was written in autumn, 

 1877], it will afford an argument in favour of the existence of the cyclic 

 relation suggested, but no argument for the endowment of solar research. 

 Professor Smyth's observations were not solar but terrestrial. 



[The prediction was not confirmed, the winter of 1877-78 being, oc 

 the contrary, exceptionally mild.] 



