FARMING.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3146, 4 December 1922, Page 8

FARMING.

WEATHEII FOIIECA STING. The search for 'evidences of cycles in weather conditions was discussed by a joint meeting of the sections of physics, economics, and agriculture of the British Association. Sir William Reveridlge said lie now withdrew his prediction, it indeed he had ever made it, as to the year 111211 being destined to repeat something like the experiences of Kilo, the year of the worst and most general famine known to European history, but he hoped that by 10211 ho might be in a. position to predict the weather tit it*2l. Such predictions, it they could be relied on, might be useful to farmers in assisting them to decide what crojw might be expected to give the best results. Sir William Beveridge, said he had 1 analysed the statistics ol wheat prices' in Western" Europe for ff7() years by the mathematical methods ol harmonic analysis, and had found that there were two'cycles of which he was absolutely certain, the one 0.1, the other ol jW.o years, as well as other cycles wlncß scorned probable. 1 hose pointed with certainty to the existence ol weather cycles, a conclusion conlirmcd by the correspondence between curves based on the economic data and curves based on the rainfall from KSSU to 15121.Irediction of the future could be reached bv projecting tbc curves forward. " Professor Turner, the Oxford astronomer. said that Sir William Re\eiidlc had collected and prepared a greater bulk of statistical materia than had ever Ik’cii done helore. and gratitude wa.s due to him. On the other hand, he thought that each supposed period would have to he worked out in detail by itscll, and Ins opinion was tbat oscillations so gicat would be found as to rule out the notion as to there living any absolute mathematical periodicity in natnia.l phenomena. Mr R. A. Fisher, of the Dawes Agricultural Station at Llothamstead, said the official agricultural ligurcs used! bv Sir William Beveridge were unsatisfactory for the purpose pi correlating agricultural yields with rainfall, as thev were based on Pri^°swhich varied for other reasons. Ihe statistics obtained at Botha instead were based ou the yield in hnshcls ol particular plots, and so were not contaminated by other factors, the difficultv of associating them with the annual rainfall was that the effect ol „il inch less or more ol ram varied according to the season ol the yeai. sometimes having no effect, sometimes a favorable, and sometimes an nnlavorable influence on the yield, according to the stage of growth ol the crop when it came. Dr Simpson, ol the Meteorological Office, said that scientific people could be divided into two classes-—those who believed in meteorological jieriods and those who did not; the jormcr class, moreover, believing only in the periods which they themselves had proposed. He showed a diagram o over 300 meteorological periods, which had been proposed from time to time, and said that there was nothing m favor of any but two. I hose two were the sunspot periodicity and the Ikj.u years’ periodicity found by ur Bruckner for temperature and rainfall. and showed that even it there were any truth in the Bruckner periodicity.' the fluctuations required by it would make no appreciable difference to observed curves. J* 1 ' son’s pungent criticisms of bir William Beveridge’s theory were received with great applause.