far as the records go, most of the country receives more rain when sunspots are many than when they are few, which would agree with what happened when the Dragon Town was inundated. In India, on the contrary, there is a large area where the rainfall diminishes at times of many sunspots, thus agreeing with the terrible famine from which the Moguls suffered so severely. In the western hemisphere, Greenland, Arizona, and California are all parts of the area where the rain increases with many sunspots, while Yucatan seems to lie in an area of the opposite type. Thus all the evidence seems to show that at times of climatic stress, such as the fourteenth century, the conditions are essentially the same as those which now prevail at times of increasing sunspots. As to the number of sunspots, there is little evidence previous to about 1750. Yet that little is both interesting and important. Although sunspots have been observed with care in Europe only a little more than three centuries, the Chinese have records which go back nearly to the beginning of the Christian era. Of course the records are far from perfect, for the work was done by individuals and not by any great organization which continued the same methods from generation to generation. The mere fact that a good observer happened to use his smoked glass to advantage may cause a particular period to appear to have an unusual number of spots. On the other hand, the fact that such an observer finds spots at some times and not at others tends to give a valuable check on his results, as does the comparison of one observer's work with that of another. Hence, in spite of many and obvious defects, most students of the problem agree that the Chinese record possesses much value, and that for a thousand years or more it gives a fairly true idea of the general aspect of the sun. In the Chinese records the years with many spots fall in groups, as would be expected, and are sometimes separated by long intervals. Certain centuries appear to have been marked by unusual spottedness. The most conspicuous of these is the fourteenth, when the years 1370 to 1385 were particularly noteworthy, for spots large enough to be visible to the naked eye covered the sun much of the time. Hence Wolf,[37] who has made an exhaustive study of the matter, concludes that there was an absolute maximum of spots about 1372. While this date is avowedly open to question, the great abundance of sunspots at that time makes it probable that it cannot be far wrong. If this is so, it seems that the great climatic disturbances of which we have seen evidence in the fourteenth century occurred at a time when sunspots were increasing, or at least when solar activity was under some profoundly disturbing influence. Thus the evidence seems to show not merely that the climate of historic times has been subject to important pulsations, but that those pulsations were magnifications of the little