THE MONTHLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JULY, 1879. 
I. THE ANOMALOUS SEASON. 
S HE exceptional weather which the British Islands, along 
with Western Europe as a whole, have experienced 
during the last eight months, makes meteorologists of 
us all. Men are eagerly asking whether the present season 
is a calamity hitherto without precedent, showing perhaps a 
lasting deterioration of our climate, and announcing the 
return of a glacial epoch, or a mere periodical phenomenon 
recurring at fixed intervals ? If we accept the latter, or 
cyclical, hypothesis, of how many years must we suppose 
the cycle to consist ? There is a widespread tendency to 
conned! recurrent phenomena, famines, pestilences, inunda- 
tions, storms, and even commercial depressions, with the 
periodicity of the sun’s spots — a term between ten and 
eleven years. That many fadts speak in favour of such a 
supposition is evident, and it may therefore be worth our 
while to consider whether a pre-eminently severe and un- 
genial season may be looked for every ten or eleven years. 
We must ask, in the first place, how, in looking back over 
the past, are we to recognise these bad seasons ? Mere 
meteorological returns, average, maximum and minimum 
temperatures, quantity of rainfall, and even hours of sun- 
shine and proportions of the equatorial and the polar 
currents, throw but an imperfect light on the subject. It is 
not so much the quantity of cold, of wind, of rain, and of 
clouded skies, as their manner of distribution, which decides 
whether a given season shall be pleasant and fruitful or the 
reverse. The best criterion of the character of the winter 
and the spring must be found, we think, in certain pheno- 
vol. IX. (n.s.) 2 H 
