Eight-Year Cycle in Relallon to Physical Cause 121 



The Role of Venus 



If Venus affects terrestrial weather it may obviously 

 do so either directly through magnetic or electrostatic 

 influence upon the Earth, or indirectly through mag- 

 netic or electrostatic influence^ upon solar radiation on 

 its way to the Earth. Both hypotheses imply that 

 Venus is a seat of electrical activity. We shall first 

 consider the evidence for this assumption. 



Professor Hale, a resourceful and cautious investiga- 

 tor, has expressed the opinion "that every star, and 

 probably every planet, is also a magnet, as the Earth 

 has been known to be since the days of Gilbert's De 

 Magnete," ~ and in 1921 Dr. Bauer, whose rare knowl- 

 edge of contemporary thought is well known, has sum- 

 marized in a sentence his view of the tendency of 

 recent investigation: ''That there are other bonds of 

 union than those of gravitation — electrical in their 

 nature — between the Earth, the sister planets, and our 

 parent Sun, by means of which cosmic forces responsible 

 for electric and magnetic effects are conveyed, is be- 

 coming increasingly evident." ^ 



These authoritative opinions would probably justify 



Field of Thunderstonns, " Philosophical Transactions of the Royal 

 Society of London, Series A, vol. 221, March, 1921, pp. 73-115. 



1 By the above statement I do not mean to limit to this kind of 

 influence the possibility of disturbance by Venus. If, for example, 

 Venus should be a source of radio-activity it could produce an effect 

 upon the Earth directly through radiation and indirectly by altering 

 the electric conductivity of the interplanetary medium. 



2 Hale, The New Heavens, p. 70. 



' Bauer, "Measures of the Electric and Magnetic Activity of the Sun 

 and the Earth, and Interrelations," Terrestrial Magnetism and AtmoS' 

 pheric Electricity, May and June, 1921, p. 42. 



