To those who will carefully and impartially study Mr. 

 Russell's work, it will be seen he realised that each place 

 has its own peculiar period ; but he was confident that it 

 would ultimately be found that the nineteen years' period, 

 if not continually repeated, would be found to be a con- 

 stituent part of a longer period ; the following quotation 

 from his paper in 187G will explain this, and also account 

 for the failure of his prediction in 1896 of good seasons 

 to come in 1897-8, and in 1901-2 : — 



" Surely we have here enough to justify a strong suspicion, to 

 say no more, that we have waves of drought passing over the 



puzzled us so long— a phenomenon which we have every reason 

 to believe is subject to laws as definite as those which held the 

 planets in their places, and the knowledge of which is fairly within 

 our reach, if we have but patience to take the uphill way that 



proven at one place, we shall find the same at another. There is, 

 I think, unmistakable evidence of several involved periods; out of 

 the combination of these with local circumstances come the results 

 there observed ; like the vibrations in musical notes, they will 

 'beat' just in accordance with the conditions existing. For 

 instance, with one of the waves of drought we may have the con- 

 ditions which shift the trade winds, and send a comparatively 

 plentiful rainfall ; or we may have a number of forces at work 

 which shall make the nineteen years' cycle of one place the thirty 

 years' period of another." 



The diagram which 1 now submit for your inspection, 

 (Plate 1) illustrates in a most remarkable manner— on the 

 testimony of the river Nile — that his ideas on the subject 

 of periodicity in weather, which he so eloquently expressed 

 in the foregoing statement, were in the main correct. A 

 close study of the diagram will, however, show that his 

 views concerning the nineteen years' period will have to 

 be considerably modified, as it evidently has not universal 

 application. 



