ut Wolf[360] in possession of materials by which he was
enabled to correct Schwabe's loosely-indicated decennial period to one
of slightly over eleven (11.11) years; and he further showed that this
fell in with the ebb and flow of magnetic change even better than
Lamont's 10-1/3 year cycle. The analogy was also pointed out between the
"light-curve," or zig-zagged line representing on paper the varying
intensity in the lustre of certain stars, and the similar delineation of
spot-frequency; the ascent from minimum to maximum being, in both cases,
usually steeper than the descent from maximum to minimum; while an
additional point of resemblance was furnished by the irregularities in
height of the various maxima. In other words, both the number of spots
on the sun and the brightness of variable stars increase, as a rule,
more rapidly than they decrease; nor does the amount of that increase,
in either instance, show any approach to uniformity.

The endeavour, suggested by the very nature of the phenomenon, to
connect sun-spots with weather was less successful. The first attempt of
the kind was made by Sir William Herschel in 1801, and a very notable
one it was. Meteorological statistics, save of the scantiest and most
casual kind, did not then exist; but the price of corn from year to year
was on record, and this, with full recognition of its inadequacy, he
adopted as his criterion. Nor was he much better off for information
respecting the solar condition. What little he could obtain, however,
served, as he believed, to confirm his surmise that a copious emission
of light and heat accompanies an abundant formation of "openings" in the
dazzling substance whence our supply of those indispensable commodities
is derived.[361] He gathered, in short, from his inquiries very much
what he had expected to gather, namely, that the price of wheat was high
when the sun showed an unsullied surface, and that food and spots became
plentiful together.[362]

Yet this plausible inference was scarcely borne out by a more exact
collocation of facts. Schwabe failed to detect any reflection of the
sun-spot period in his meteorological register. Gautier[363] reached a
provisional conclusion the reverse--though not markedly the reverse--of
Herschel's. Wolf, in 1852, derived from an examination of Vogel's
collection of Zurich Chronicles (1000-1800 A.D.) evidence showing (as he
thought) that minimum years were usually wet and stormy, maximum years
d