30 T. W. KEELE. 



Whether he was right or not in his conclusions remains 

 still to be proved, but I feel sure you will agree that we 

 owe him a deep debt of gratitude for all his labour in this 

 direction. The facts he accumulated with so much patience 

 and sagacity are of the utmost value to enable the subject 

 to be followed up. 



It must be remembered that lie was not alone in his 

 views concerning periodicity in the weather. In our own 

 State he had the support of two of our most distinguished 

 scientists, namely, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, and Professor J. 

 Smith, both of whom worthily filled the Chair of this Society, 

 and quite recently confirmation of the correctness of Mr. 

 Russell's conclusions as to the nineteen years' change in 

 the weather is given by Colonel H. E. Rawson, C.B., in a 

 paper read by him before the Royal Meteorological Society 

 on 15th April, 1908, in which he shows that in South Africa 

 the range of the anti-cly clonic belt varies from 24£° S. Lat. 

 to 34° S. Lat. in a period of nineteen years, and these 

 cyclonic changes are coincident with the changes of the 

 weather from wet to dry, and vice versa, a fact which lie 

 acknowledged had been noticed i*y Mr. Ilussell in ;i paper 

 contributed by him to the Royal Meteorological Society in 

 December 1892. 



I will now proceed to explain the work done by myself, 

 in order to ascertain how far reliance might be placed on 

 the theory of nineteen years periodicity in weather. I may 

 say that from the time when Mr. Russell read his first 

 paper in 1876, I have always been in sympathy with his 

 views on the question, and although I regret I was unable 

 during his life time to afford him any assistance, it is a 

 source of great satisfaction to me now (making use of the 

 information he so laboriously collected, but arranging it 

 under a different system, and with the help of data which 

 he did not possess) to be in a position to lay before his 

 critics the proofs they declared were unattainable. 



