176 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 70 



Prof. Kullmer found also that in the interval from 1878 to 1887, 

 and in the years 1899 to 1908, the storm course in the United States 

 was displaced towards the south and west. He draws attention 

 also (1914, p. 205) to the coincident displacement of the isogonals 

 in the same way and that this indicates that the magnetic north 

 pole has been displaced. He considers as probable the hypothesis, 

 that the storm course is centered about the magnetic pole and moves 

 with it. 



VARIATIONS IN PRECIPITATION AND SUN SPOTS 



The relation between the variations in the precipitation and the 

 sun spots has led to many investigations since Meldrum in the 

 year 1872 showed for several tropical stations that the rainfall 

 varies directly as the sun spots so that a maximum of rainfall occurs 

 at the maximum of sun spots and vice versa. Sir Norman Lockyer 

 showed this also for several stations in Ceylon and in India. Inves- 

 tigations of Symons and Jelinek indicated the same conclusion, that 

 more rain falls at sun spot maximum than at sun spot minimum, 

 but it appeared that the periodicity is most marked and regular in 

 the tropical regions. Hahn pointed out that in the period from 

 1820 to 1870 dry summers were most prevalent during the time 

 of increasing sun spot numbers. On the whole the investigations 

 on the relation between precipitation and sun spots are very con- 

 flicting and have led to more or less doubtful results. Meteorolo- 

 gists have here as in most similar investigations made the error of 

 assuming that the same cause should everywhere produce the same 

 effect, without taking sufficiently into consideration that the same 

 cause at different places may act oppositely. Archibald and Hill 

 have independently shown that the winter rain in India has the 

 opposite course to that which Meldrum found. They obtained in 

 fact a minimum at the maximum of sun spots and a maximum of 

 winter rain about at the time of the minimum of sun spots. On 

 the other hand. Hill seeks to show that the Indian summer mon- 

 soon rain has a great tendency to vary in coincidence with the sun 

 spots in this manner that an excess of precipitation occurs in the 

 first half of the cycle after the sun spot maximum and vice versa, 

 but on the whole the curves show little agreement. Blanford came 

 meanwhile to the conclusion (1889) that the precipitation in India 

 on the whole gave no sure indication of a ten- or eleven-year period 

 for the last twenty-two years. 



For Europe, the connection between precipitation and sun spots 

 has also been investigated. See Schreiber (1896, 1903), A. Buchan 



