The Cycle Year 1905 and the Coming Season. 239 



good rains in South Africa, so that the mitigation rains in my early 

 work resolve themselves into light rains at the sun spotminimum and 

 heavy cycle rains at intervals of 12 and 13 years alternating. This 

 cycle of 12 and 13 years alternating (or 12J- years as a mean period) 

 I termed Meldrum's cycle, at the conclusion of my work in 1888, as a 

 compliment to Meldrum, the eminent Mauritius astronomer, who 

 was the first to connect in an unmistakable manner solar activity 

 with terrestrial meteorological phenomena. As early as 1876 

 Meldrum's view was accepted that there was an unmistakable 

 connection between the frequency of sunspots and hurricanes in 

 the Indian Ocean. If Meldrum's cycle continues as it promises, 

 it will be pleasant in this way to perpetuate Meldrum's name. In 

 1892 the 12-5-year cycle brought almost the heaviest rains ever 

 experienced to the Cape Peninsula and the south-west. We are 

 concerned with it to-night, since it is again before us in 1905. 



Bruckner's Cycle of 35 Years. 



Bruckner, as you are aware, has made extensive researches which 

 tend to show that a large class of terrestrial meteorological pheno- 

 mena recur at a period of about 35 years. Bruckner's 35-year cycle 

 has been confirmed and extended by the researches of J. Hann and 

 by the results of Eichter's study on the variations in the Swiss 

 glaciers. Bruckner's discovery arose out of a study of the varying 

 levels of the Caspian Sea, which, being a closed inland sea, furnishes 

 an index of the variations of rainfall over the wide area draining 

 into the Caspian Sea — an area extending north even above Moscow, 

 (Eussel has followed a similar line of inquiry with regard to Lake 

 George, in New South Wales, and by and by data from the African 

 lakes will be precious.) 



Bruckner published some of his most important results in 1890. 

 This year these results have found their way into the daily press 

 with reference to the fierce criticism that has been raised over 

 ordinary short-period weather forecasting and long-period fore- 

 casting. It has been claimed by the admirers of Bruckner in the 

 public press that his researches would enable us to predict the 

 characters of seasons in a practical way, which would be an immense 

 advantage to the world at large. This, I need not say, is a result 

 which has not yet been arrived at. Bruckner's researches, wide- 

 spreading and important though they are, lack that element of 

 precision which is seen in the Cape weather cycles. I am men- 

 tioning Bruckner's cycle this evening because, although his maximum 

 rain period has been fixed about 1878, 1879, or 1880, and thus should 



