217 
on Meteorology which has given occasion to Mr. Hopkins’s 
remarks. I would take this opportunity, however, to call 
the attention of meteorologists to the very extraordinary and 
abnormal features of the last two years as strongly illustrative 
of the important part this element of meteorological dynamics 
has been playing in their production. The great outbreak 
of the solar spots occurred in the year 1859 with unusual 
suddenness, and on the 1st of September in that year pheno- 
mena were exhibited in its photosphere indicative of a most 
remarkable state of excitement, accompanied with magnetic 
and auroral disturbances of unprecedented intensity and 
duration. This occurred as the sun was passing southward 
across the equator, and from the accounts received from 
Australia, the southern summer of that year 1859-60 appears 
to have been one of very unusual heat. The quantity of 
vapour thrown into the atmosphere during that summer from 
the southern ocean would seem not yet to have been got rid 
of, and to have given rise to diversions of the aerial currents 
both of air and vapour from their normal courses which have 
not even yet subsided into their regular and habitual train. 
I throw out this, however, rather as a suggestion which I 
consider worthy of further examination by the light of 
meteorological records and returns collected on a very large 
scale, than as having myself arrived at any definite concep- 
tion of the actual steps of the process that has been going 
forward. 
Mr. Baxendell, in illustration of the remarks in the latter 
part of Sir John Herschel’s communication, read the follow- 
ing extract of a letter dated at sea, near Ceylon, January 
30th, 1862, which he had received from Mr. Thomas Heelis, 
F.R.A.S., who sailed from England for Calcutta on the 18th 
of November last : — 
“We have had very peculiar and unsatisfactory trade 
winds; we ran down inside of Madeira and the Cape de 
