xviii President's Address 



spots and sun disturbances, and rainfall and temperature on 

 the earth, by Mr. Meldrum of Mauritius, and Mr. Stone of 

 the Cape. Mr. Meldrum shows that the years of maximum 

 and minimum of sun spots coincide with the maximum and 

 minimum of Mauritius cyclones, and then compares the rain- 

 fall at Brisbane, Adelaide, and Mauritius with those periods, 

 and finds a similar coincidence : least rainfall with minimum 

 of solar spots, and vice versa. Mr. Norman Lockyer, writing 

 in Nature an article called " Meteorology of the Future,' 3 

 concludes with the following words, which I am sure all 

 scientific men will endorse : — 



" What, therefore, is necessary in order to discover the 

 true nature of this nexus ? Two things are necessary, and 

 they are these : In the first place, we must obtain an accu- 

 rate knowledge of the currents of the sun, and secondly, we 

 must obtain an accurate knowledge of the currents of the 

 earth. The former of these demands the united efforts of pho- 

 tography and spectrum analysis, and the second demands the 

 pursuit of meteorology as a physical science, and not as a 

 mere collection of weather statistics. When these demands 

 are met — and in spite of the Mrs. Partingtons who are 

 endeavouring to prevent this, they will soon be met — we 

 shall have a Science of Meteorology placed on a firm basis — 

 the Meteorology of the Future." 



We have often suspected in Australia that our wet 

 seasons and droughts were cyclical, but the period 

 over which observations have extended scarcely ad- 

 mitted of any trustworthy deductions ; if we compare 

 however, the results of observations made in this colony 

 since 1844 — the decidedly larger rainfall in the maxi- 

 mum sun spot years and the less in the minimum years, 

 is well marked. 



A system of meteorological work, such as I have 

 referred to above, would eventually become of inestimable 



