PERIODICITY OF GOOD AND BAD SEASONS. REL 
nineteen years; the same remarks apply to the other B.C. droughts. 
I rejected one of them, and gave the reason for doing so: the 
remaining seventeen all support the nineteen years’ cycle. The 
drought in India 503 B.C. to 443 B.C. when we come to look into 
it, is not such a remarkable occurrence, for we find from the care- 
fully kept meteorological records of England, that last century, 
i.e, from 1738 to 1762 a period of twenty-five years, there was a 
drought in England, in which the average rainfall for the whole 
period was only 78% of the average ; four years of this period, 
1740-41-42-43 were exceptionally dry, the rainfall only amounted 
to 63% of the average, and perhaps it will seem. remarkable, but 
according to the nineteen years cycle, part of 1740, all 1741-42 
and part of 1743 must have been a drought in New South Wales. 
Again other four years of the English period 1759-60-61-62 made 
a drought with an average percentage of rain of 76 or 24% below 
the average, and again we find the computed drought for Australia 
part of 1759, all 1760-61, and part of 1762. It is obvious there- 
fore that there can be long periods of drought in England as in 
India, and that in them there may be intensified periods of the 
drought, the dates of which would be chronicled and fit into the 
nineteen years’ cycle. These facts seem to me to be strongly in 
favour of the nineteen years’ cycle instead of against it as the 
Professor thinks. 
(6) The Professor says, ‘the cycle is so full of different droughts 
that it seems easier to hit a drought somewhere than miss 
altogether.” [ collected many facts about these minor droughts, 
— have good reason to believe that I could, for some short 
intervals, shew that the great and little droughts in the northern 
hemisphere could be shewn to be in the same order and relation 
as they are in Australia, but I thought that there was not evidence 
®nough to be convincing, and I omitted them as they were not 
material to my purpose, and took the two major droughts, and 
have Proved that they have recurred very frequently in their 
- Had I taken one only, it would have been enough for my 
se epee i.¢., to prove that a certain phase of weather recurs, bat a : 
