38 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
of weakness to issue no forecast when conditions appear roughly normal ; 
but it is better to admit your limitations, and only speak when you can 
do so with some safety, than to issue predictions when they are little 
more than guesses. 
The objection is sometimes raised that though a foreshadowing 
of abundant or scanty rain over a region may be right four times out of 
five, owing to local variations the predictions will not be so successful 
when applied to a particular farm ; and it must be admitted that this 
criticism is valid. But in England, as I learn from Sir John Russell, 
there are modifications of treatment and manuring that are appropriate 
before wet seasons and others before dry ; in South Africa, in hilly country, 
the upper levels are better for cultivation in wet years and the lower 
ones in dry years; in India, if the rains fail, cotton and millets will 
grow though the ordinary crops may perish. We may hope that, 
when our methods have improved, the prediction when applied to a 
particular farm will be right at least three times in five years; and if 
this is consistently acted upon, it will prove of material value in the 
long run. 
Of further applications of these methods some are worthy of a passing 
notice. For Siam, whose summer rain has a coefficient of 0-7 with the 
contemporary southern oscillation, a former Indian colleague has worked 
out a foreshadowing formula with a relationship of 0-8. And at length 
China, which has suffered terribly from floods as well as droughts, is 
receiving attention. A graduate from Shanghai, now working in London, 
finds that the Yangtse valley and three areas along the coast have enough 
data for a preliminary investigation, and has worked out formule for 
prediction with coefficients between 0:6 and 0-7. Mention should also 
be made of the researches of Okada in connection with the rice crop 
of Japan. 
Let us now turn from the academic to the practical, and see how far 
these theoretical methods justify themselves in actual experience. I 
believe that the earliest regular seasonal forecasts based on meteorological 
instead of astrological data were those of the Indian monsoon of June 
to September, started half a century ago in India by H. F. Blanford, 
and depending mainly for their success on the ill-effect upon the monsoon 
of excessive winter or spring snowfall in the Himalayas ; finally, however, 
he made the big generalisation that droughts might be associated with 
unusually high pressure over a great part of Asia, at Mauritius and in 
Australia. Eliot continued the monsoon forecasts from 1887 to 1903, 
but data in those days were scanty ; he attempted far too much detail, 
his mode of expression was somewhat pontifical, and the newspapers 
became sarcastic ; so latterly he obtained immunity from criticism by 
printing the forecasts as confidential documents. The gradual intro- 
duction of statistical methods in India has undoubtedly led to improve- 
ment; but as we have seen it is much easier to predict the rainfall of 
December to February than that of June to September, and the length 
of the series of Indian data is not yet great enough to give complete 
reliability. After careful scrutiny I estimate that of the forecasts issued 
before the monsoon periods from 1905 to 1932 two-thirds were correct ; 
