ily variation that Lamont
found to increase and diminish once in every 10-1/3 years.

In the following winter, Sir Edward Sabine, ignorant as yet of Lamont's
conclusion, undertook to examine a totally different set of
observations. The materials in his hands had been collected at the
British colonial stations of Toronto and Hobarton from 1843 to 1848, and
had reference, not to the regular diurnal swing of the needle, but to
those curious spasmodic vibrations, the inquiry into the laws of which
was the primary object of the vast organisation set on foot by Humboldt
and Gauss. Yet the upshot was practically the same. Once in about ten
years, magnetic disturbances (termed by Humboldt "storms") were
perceived to reach a maximum of violence and frequency. Sabine was the
first to note the coincidence between this unlooked-for result and
Schwabe's sun-spot period. He showed that, so far as observation had yet
gone, the two cycles of change agreed perfectly both in duration and
phase, maximum corresponding to maximum, minimum to minimum. What the
nature of the connection could be that bound together by a common law
effects so dissimilar as the rents in the luminous garment of the sun,
and the swayings to and fro of the magnetic needle, was and still
remains beyond the reach of well-founded theory; but the fact was from
the first undeniable.

The memoir containing this remarkable disclosure was presented to the
Royal Society, March 18, and read May 6, 1852.[357] On the 31st of July
following, Rudolf Wolf at Berne,[358] and on the 18th of August, Alfred
Gautier at Sion,[359] announced, separately and independently, perfectly
similar conclusions. This triple event is perhaps the most striking
instance of the successful employment of the Baconian method of
co-operation in discovery, by which "particulars" are amassed by one set
of investigators--corresponding to the "Depredators" and "Inoculators"
of Solomon's House--while inductions are drawn from them by another and
a higher class--the "Interpreters of Nature." Yet even here the
convergence of two distinct lines of research was wholly fortuitous, and
skilful combination owed the most brilliant part of its success to the
unsought bounty of what we call Fortune.

The exactness of the coincidence thus brought to light was fully
confirmed by further inquiries. A diligent search through the scattered
records of sun-spot observations, from the time of Galileo and Scheiner
onwards, p