What was looked for in 1872 was a change in the quantity of rain at maximum sun spots only, the idea being that there might be an effective change of solar temperature, either in excess or defect, at such times and that there would be a gradual and continuous variation from maximum to maximum. We see that the rainfalls referred to above justify the conclusions derived from the recent work that two effects ought to be expected in a sun-spot cycle instead of one. There was excess of rainfall, not only near the sun-spot maximum, but near the minimum. If the authors of this communication to which I refer are right, then droughts and famines occur in India because the rain pulses, which are associated with the solar-heat pulses, are of short duration. When they cease the quantity of rain which falls in the Indian area is not sufficient, without water storage, for the purposes of agriculture; they are followed, therefore, by droughts, and at times subsequently by famines. They divide the period 1877—89 as under: { 1877. Rain from − pulse { 1878. { 1879 (part). { 1879 (part). No rain pulse { 1880 (central year). { 1881 (part). { 1881 (part). { 1882. Rain from + pulse { 1883. { 1884 (part). { 1884 (part). { 1885 } No rain pulse { 1886 } (central year). { 1887 (part). { 1887 (part). Rain from − pulse { 1888. { 1889. Their statement is based on the fact that all the famines which have devastated India for the last seventy years have occurred at intervals of eleven years, or thereabouts, working backward and forward from the central years 1880 and 1885–86 in the above table, the middle years, that is, between the pulses. Mr. Willcocks, in a paper read at the Meteorological Congress at Chicago, remarked that “famines in India are generally years of low flood in Egypt.” It is now pointed out that the highest Niles follow the years of the + and − pulses, as does the highest rainfall in the Indian area. Even if these results, which were communicated to the Royal Society of London five weeks before the end of the century, be confirmed, it may be pointed out that Sir William Herschel’s suggestion of 1801 will have required a whole century for its fulfilment, so slowly do those branches of science move which have not already led to some practical development. NORMAN LOCKYER. PHILOSOPHY