A Weather Cycle System.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7656, 15 June 1896, Page 4

A Weather Cycle System.

Mr Russell, the Government astronomer of !New South Wales has announced the discovery, or rather the re-discovery — as he alleges it was previously known and acted upon by the ancient Jews and Egyptians — of a weather cycle system. In an interesting paper read before the Royal Society he undertook to demonstrate that periodically good and bad seasons occurred, dating his calculations back to B.C. 1705, the time of Pharaoh's famine, and, taking the world as his field of observations, with special reference to Australia from its foundation to the present day, ho arrived at the conclusion that all historic data, ancient and modern, pointed to the fact that pronounced droughts recurred regularly every nineteen years. He quoted numerous authenticated instances in support of a nineteen year cycle. Mr Russell added the comforting assuranco that drought years forecasted good seasons for 1897 and 1898. Scientists will be specially interested in the statement that as Mr Russell's investigations proceeded, the weight of evidence gradually converged upon the moon as the exciting cause. He never had any sympathy with the theory of lunar influence on the weather, and received such evidence against his will, but the logic of facts left no alternative but to accept the moon as the prime motor.