On a Cycle in Weather Changes

Abstract

IT is known that Prof. Brueckner, of Berne, in a work on “Klimaschwankungen,” published a short time ago, offers a large amount of evidence for the view that our globe is subject to a weather-cycle of about 35 years, a series of cold and wet years, or warm and dry ones, recurring at about that interval. Has it been noticed in this connection that Bacon, in one of his essays (No. lviii. “Of Vicissitude of Things”), makes reference to such a cycle? The passage is as follows:—“There is a toy which I have heard, and I would not have it given over, but waited upon a little. They say it is observed in the Low Countries (I know not in what part) that every five-and-thirty years the same kind and suit of weathers comes again; as great frosts, great wet, great droughts, warm winters, summers with little heat, and the like, and they call it the prime. It is a thing I do the rather mention, because, computing backwards, I have found the same concurrence.”