The argument of his paper was that if one hundred years 

 of climate be carefully studied so that the salient features 

 are clearly defined, and this section of time be compared 

 with all past time, so far as data are available, and it is 

 found that the salient points in our century are repetitions 

 of the salient points in all past time and probably in all 

 countries, then one is justified in coming to the conclusion 

 that those salient points are definitely connected with the 

 climate of the world, and will appear again regularly in 

 the future. The weak point, he said, was freely admitted, 

 namely, that history has not kept a regular and continuous 

 account of droughts, but only recorded those which became 

 very prominent. The strong point was that all the data 

 that history does give us are in favour of the nineteen years' 



Although the evidence he had collected in support of his 

 theory appeared to him to he conclusive, he realised the 

 difficulty in demonstrating it to others, and it occurred to 

 him that it would be useful to have a diagram in which all 

 the droughts, without regard to their intensity, be placed 

 in their order of time. Not only was this desirable for 

 seeing what the relation in time was. but it had become 

 evident that it would be impossible to see the relation 

 between our droughts and those in other countries, unless 

 some such pictorial arrangement was made. He accordingly 

 constructed a diagram in which was shown the various 

 droughts in a cycle of nineteen years, which he marked A, 

 B, C, D, E. It was thus seen that drought 'A' was regular 

 and occurred every nineteen years. Drought 'B' was 

 found to recur with nearly the same regularity. The 

 remaining three also recurred with an average interval of 

 nineteen years, but they were not quite regular, may in 

 fact, differ from time to time a year, or even two years. 



Having prepared his diagram in this manner he proceeded 

 to show that nearly all the great droughts of Australia 



