i88 5 .] 
Correspondence. 
563 
SUN-SPOTS AND THE WEATHER. 
Before ascribing to the sun’s spots, or to the conjunctions of 
the planets, or to any other cosmic cause, a decided influence 
upon the weather, we must surely be able to show that any given 
season is exceptionally hot or cold, wet or dry, as the case mav 
be, over the whole world, or at least over an entire hemisphere 7 
noi ein or southern. But we find no such uniformity. If we 
look at the last winter, we see it mild in Britain, exceptionally 
rigorous in Spain, especially in Granada at the time of the dis- 
astrous earthquakes, in Southern France, Austria, and 'in the 
u nitea otcites. 
Turning to the present summer we find it abnormally cold and 
wet in Iceland and on the west coast of Norwav, cold and dry in 
Britain, the polar current prevailing in July and August, and un- 
usually cold in South Africa, which is of course now having its 
winter. Y et all the while Russia is having a season not merely 
dry, but abnormally warm, to such an extent as to injure the 
grain crops. J 
Similar discrepancies between the weather in the East and in 
the Y\ est of Europe have been noted in former seasons. What 
then, can be the meaning either of the scarcity or the abundance 
ol sun-spots ? 
Cloud-Gazer. 
SPIRITUALISM AND SCIENCE. 
It would be unwise were I to defend the position which I took 
in my article in your July number without awaiting the finishing 
of the reply by “ The Author of Scientific Materialism.” But I 
cannot help referring to one of the misconstructions of my views 
in which Mr A. R Wallace has indulged, in his paper in 
V -H J Uy IIth - 1 nowhere assert or imply, as he puts 
it, that it Spirits exist and communicate with men they must 
necessarily know more of the material universe than men do 
and must communicate their superior knowledge to us.” 
Now Swedenborg represents his Spirits as giving particulars 
conceining Jupiter and Saturn, — not too harmonious with the 
results reached by modern astronomical research, — and conse- 
quently as both knowing more of the material universe than men 
and as being willing to communicate such knowledge. I merely 
pointoutthe improbability of such Spirits being either totally io- n0 _ 
rantof the very existence of Uranus and Neptune, or being unwilling 
