238 Transactions of the South African Philosophical Society. 



next sunspot or, to speak more correctly, solar period brings us to 

 1905 — the present year — and this seems likely to be the maximum 

 year of observed sunspots. For some months the sun has been 

 rarely free from spots, several visible without any magnifying power. 

 Yesterday an ordinary field-glass showed four spots ranged in a long 

 line in the sun's southern hemisphere. 



In connection with sunspot rains there is a feature which I have 

 referred to in some of the cyclical diagrams as " Lag" rains. The 

 cyclical diagrams on the wall for Grahamstown and Durban show 

 "Lag" rains in 1874 at Durban, and at Grahamstown in 1874 and 

 1886. On some of the other long-period rainfall records these " Lag " 

 rains are more in evidence. On the Maritzburg-Gardens-cliff 

 cyclical diagram they are in evidence in 1864 (one year late), in 

 1874, and (weakly) in 1896. They will be found discussed in my 

 "Cycles of Drought and Good Seasons," published in 1888. They 

 are not noticeable in recent years, and as the record extends it may 

 be found necessary to abandon them as unproven. Some of them 

 may be connected with sunspots as observed. But I am inclined to 

 attach little importance to observed sunspots. I have in all my 

 work confined myself to the solar cycle of 11 "11 years, and that this 

 is the correct view to take appears to be borne out in the diagrams 

 before you. In 1870 occurred the strongest maximum of sunspots 

 observed in that century. During that year and the preceding year 

 and the following year there was drought in South Africa. The 

 solar maximum, according to the ll'll period, fell in 1872, and with 

 it came good rains east and west in South Africa. As Sir Norman 

 Lockyer observes (Nature, July 15, 1905), sunspots are only one and 

 a very partial expression of solar energy. 



Meldrum's Cycle of 12 and 13 Years alternating. 



In my work, "Cycles of Drought and Good Seasons in South 

 Africa," referred to above, this will be found described at page 104 

 as "the Mitigation Drought of the sunspot minimum," since they 

 first appeared in the guise of a break in droughts which were 

 connected with the sunspot minimum. Further research led me 

 to modify this view, and to regard these rains as of equal importance 

 with the other two cycles of Cape rainfall. Sir Norman Lockyer 

 and Dr. Lockyer, of the Solar Physics Observatory, Kensington, 

 have shown that good rains in India occur at periods of maximum 

 and minimum sunspots ; and Sir John Eliot, and I subsequently 

 (Nature, February 9, 1905), have shown that there has during the 

 last 10 years been a connection between good rains in India and 



