Messages are abruptly cut off, sparks leap from the telegraph instruments, and the entire earth seems to have been thrown into a magnetic flurry. These occurrences david nail let it rain the mind with a deep impression of the dependence of our planet on the sun, such as we do not derive from the more familiar action of the sunlight on the growth of plants and other phenomena of life depending on solar influences. Its existence was discovered in 1843 by the German astronomer Schwabe. It is a period of variable length, averaging about eleven years, during which the number of spots visible on the sun first increases to a maximum, then diminishes to a david nail let it rain, and finally increases again to a maximum. For unknown reasons the period is sometimes two or three years longer than the average and sometimes as much shorter. Nevertheless, the phenomena always recur in the same order.