550 E. HUNTINGTON SOLAK HYPOTHESIS OF CLIMATIC CH^^XGES 



very slight. It amoimts to no more than we could find at present by 

 selecting two periods of l^fc years each. This is interesting because the 

 end of the sixteenth century, according to our California curve, was a 

 time when the climate was practically the same as at present, although 

 the California curve may indicate a slightly greater precipitation then 

 than now. This means that the observations of Tycho Brahe agree with 

 what we should expect. Going farther back, we find that the fourteenth 

 century was highly peculiar. This has been discussed in various places, 

 but is summed up by Pettersson.^* According to him, the fourteentli cen- 

 tury shows 



"a record of extreme climatic variations. In the cold winters the rivers Rhine. 

 Danube. Thames, and Po were frozen for weeks and months. On these cold 

 winters there followed violent floods, so that the rivers mentioned inundated 

 their valleys. Such floods are recorded in .55 summers in the 14th century. 

 There is. of course, nothing astonishing in the fact that the inundations of the 

 great rivers of Europe were more devastating ♦300 to T<X> years ago than in our 

 days, when the flow of the rivers has been regulated by canals, locks, etc. ; but 

 still the inundations in the 13th and 14th centuries must have surpassed every- 

 thing of that kind which has oc-curred since then. In 1.342 the waters of the 

 Rhine rose so high that they inundated the city of Mayence and the Cathedral 

 iisque ad ciDgulum hominLs." The walls of Cologne were flooded so that they 

 could be passed by boats in July. This oc-curred also in 1374 in the mid.st of 

 the month of February, which is of course an unusual season for disasters of 

 the kind. Again in other years the drought was so intense that the same 

 rivers, the Danube. Rhine, and others, nearly dried up. and the Rhine could be 

 forded at Cologne. This happened at least twice in the same c-entury. There 

 is one exc-eptional summer of such evil record that centuries afterwards it was 

 s^token of as 'the old hot summer of 1357.' " 



Pettersson goes on to speak of two oceanic phenomena on which the 

 old chronicles lay greater stress than on all others : 



**The first [is] the great storm-floods on the coasts of the North Sea and the 

 Baltic, which occurred so frequently that not less than nineteen floods of a 

 destructiveness unparalleled in later times are recorded from the 14th century. 

 The coastline of the North Sea was completely altered by these floods. Thus 

 on January 16, 1-300, half of the island Heligoland and many other islands 

 were engulfed by the sea. The same fate overtook the island of Borkum. torn 

 into several islands by the storm-flood of January 16. which remoulded the 

 Fri.sian Islands into their present shai)e. when also Wendingstadt. on the island 

 of Sylt. and Thiryu parishes were engulfed. This flood is known under the name 

 of 'the great man-drowning.' The coasts of the Baltic also were exposed to 

 storm-floods of unparalleled violence. On November 1. 1.304. the island of 

 Ruden was torn asunder from Rugen by the force of the waves. Time does not 

 allow me to dwell upon individual disasters of this kind„ but it will be well to 



* O. Pettersson : The connection between hj-drographical and meteorological phenom- 

 ena. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, vol. 38. pp. 17-4-175. 



