644 PROFESSOR PIAZZI SMYTH ON THE 
dominate every one and every thing. But meanwhile a most ‘unexpected ray of 
light had beamed upon us here in Edinburgh. Urged to it, as Iam happy 
now to confess by my Wife, and having had all along some suspicion of those 
foreign accelerated dates for the Sun-spot minimum, | took to observing 
Sun-spots myself. Only in a rough way and at home; but it was enough! 
For I soon found that the minimum had by no means taken place in 1877°5 ; 
but was delayed until 1879 was begun. And not indeed until 1879°8 was 
there any very decided manifestation of the Solar forces of a new Cycle in 
strenuous action. But at that date one morning, something so signal was wit- 
nessed in the Sun, that I wrote of it the same day to “ Nature,” under the title 
of “Sun-spots in earnest ;” and five months after that, on the strength of a 
certain night observation, wrote of “The Aurora at last.” Since the publi- 
cation too, I have been doubly confirmed as to the Sun-spots from the Royal 
Observatory, Greenwich ; first by the chief Assistant Mr Curistiz, writing to 
“ Nature” after seeing my Sun-spot letter there, and detailing similar observa- 
tions at Greenwich; and second, by the Astronomer Royal, Sir G. B. Arry, in 
his late annual Report, expressly giving the same dates, viz., the beginning of 
1879 for the epoch of the minimum of Sun-spots, and October 1879 as a Jater 
date from which period onwards and ever since, the display of spots has been 
large and generally increasing. The return of the Aurora was also confirmed, 
first by a disturbance of the magnets at Greenwich on the same night,* and 
then after a while by a Canadian observer (Colonel BuLGER) announcing that 
after a long barren interval an Aurora had at last appeared there, on the same 
evening that I had observed it in Edinburgh, and so like it in character that my 
description in “ Nature,” of the Edinburgh phenomenon would have served for 
the Canadian one as well. And now a Scandinavian Professor,t at Bergen 
in Norway, is advertising in “ Nature” (No. 567, vol. xxii. for July 1, 1880) for 
Auroral observers ; because in the next few years he expects Auroras to be so 
much more numerous and intense than they have been for years past. 
General for India), Mr Mernprum of Mauritius Observatory, Professor Stantey Jevons of London 
University, and Professor Dovenas AronrBaLD have written so much both separately and combinedly 
on Sun-spots, Indian rainfalls, and Indian famines, ship assurances in the Tropics, and commercial 
panics, and become so widely approved therein, that I need only allude to them here by name. 
Though it has not been sufficiently brought out yet that Dr W. W. Hunver received, apparently, his 
earliest ideas on the subject somewhere in 1875, from Mr N. Poeson, Government Astronomer at 
Madras, who was then in rather low spirits because he was expecting a famine in the next year; and 
expressly, as he particularly explained, on account of the approach of the period of a minimum of 
Sun-spots; which famine did take place, and with all the disastrous consequences to life in India, 
and purse in Great Britain, which the daily papers have chronicled since, but Mr Pogson saw feelingly 
so long beforehand. 
* The disturbance of the Earth’s Magnetism appears to have been noticed the same night at 
Vienna and also at Lisbon; see ‘‘ Nature,” p. 220, No. 558, vol. xxii. or for July 8, 1880, 
+ Sopuus Tromuoxt, Professor of Mathematics. 
{ Some of these were closer than he was aware of, for on August 11 and 12, summer season 
though it was, the most magnificent of coloured Auroras were witnessed over a large part of England 
