248 STRATTS METEOROLOGY. 



The course of the periodic wave in this table and in the one 

 below exhibiting the Straits rainfall, closely correspond.] 



" In 1873 M. Poet found a similar connexion between the hur- 

 ricanes of the West Indies and the years of maximum sun-spots. 

 He enumerated three hundred and fifty-seven hurricanes between 

 1750 and 1873, and stated that out of twelve maxima, ten agreed. 



'• 110. In 1877 Mr. Henry Jeula, of Lloyd's, and Dr. Hunter 

 found that the casualties of the registered vessels of the United 

 Kingdom were 17J per cent, greater during the two years about 

 maximum than during the two years about minimum in the solar 

 cycle. 



" 111. Temperature. — Baxendell, in a memoir already quoted, 

 was the first to conclude that the distribution of temperature under 

 different winds, like that of barometric pressure, is sensibly in- 

 fluenced by the changes which take place in solar activity. In 

 1870 Piazzi Smyth published the results of an important series 

 of observations made from 1837 to 1869 with thermometers sunk 

 in the rock at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. He conclu- 

 ded from these that a heat wave occurs about every eleven years, 

 its maximum being not far from the minimum of the sun-spot cycle. 

 Sir G. B. Airy has obtained similar results from the Greenwich ob- 

 servations. In 1781 E. J. Stone examined the temperature obser- 

 vations recorded during thirty years at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 and came to the conclusion that the same cause which leads to an 

 excess of mean annual temperature at the Cape leads equally to a 

 dissipation of sun-spots. Dr. W. Koppen in 1873 discussed at great 

 length the connexion between sun-spots and terrestrial temperature 

 and found that in the tropics the maximum temperature occurs 

 fully a year before the minimum of sun-spots, while in the zones 

 beyond the tropics it occurs two years after the minimum. The 

 regularity and magnitude of the temperature wave are most 

 strongly marked in the tropics. " 



It has been thought best to give the whole of this well-digested 



Nummary, as it presents, under the authoritative initials of " B. S.," 



