54 



SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I46 



Fig. 45. — Solar constant, rising and falling trends. 



Our critics, however, maintain that they have demonstrated by correlation 

 methods, and by references to my writings, that the supposed variation of the 

 sun is largely due to defects in our methods of observing, and that the con- 

 sequences deduced from such supposed variations are illusory. 



If so, we must assume that these interesting curves, which show such extraor- 

 dinary inversions of temperature departures, would as likely as not result from 

 a haphazard choice of any 320 dates, quite as well as from the selection of 320 

 dates which were chosen because they were observed to be the dates of com- 

 mencing solar changes. This is of course absurd. 



Several of my friends have urged me to omit the just-preceding part of my 

 defense. They consider that meteorologists are so firmly fixed in their dis- 

 belief in the meteorological importance of day-to-day solar variations that no 

 meteorological evidence whatever can persuade them to reconsider the matter. 

 But though I may be singular in my opinion, I regard the present argument 

 as unanswerable. Though it may be futile for the present, owing to this pre- 

 vailing attitude, I shall proceed to place on record still more support of my 

 argument. 



First, as I showed in my paper, "The dependence of terrestrial temperatures 

 on the variations of the sun's radiation," above cited, not only do several cities 

 show large opposing trends of temperature following rising and falling sequences 



