RAIN-MAKING.

Gisborne Times, Volume IX, Issue 913, 11 June 1903, Page 3

RAIN-MAKING.

Dll MCCARTHY’S BOASTING

By Telegraph —Press Association — Copyright,. MELBOURNE, June 111. A suggestion was made to Dr McCarthy I hat Broken llillites might, refuse to pav for tiie rain after hi had made it, on the ground that Providence had sent it-, and not him He replied that there could he m possible doubt about it. lie would, he declared, send such straight, up and down tropical rain as they had never had before.

An Australian paper states : The man in Victoria who claims to have solved the problem of unlimited rain production may find out that he is playing with fire as well as water before lie is dune. Latest reports credit him with being able to bring down rain at so much per inch, in any locality and in any weather, anti the inevitable syndicate is already to the loie

to patent the invention and put it oil the market in regular form. The idea is to send some sort of a gas up to a certain altitude, when it explodes with effects like thosw'of thunder in causing precipitation of moisturo. It is only the empiric dogmatist who denies the possibility of working nature's forces in any sort of harness for any kind of purpose, and nobody knows that tho day of the artificial rainmaker is not at hand. If so, it is then that the trouble will begin. For who will dosido on what day the rain shall fall '! AVill the lady who went out in her newest spring bonnet, and got it spoiled by a totally unlooked-for downpour, have no remedy against the person who turned her fino-day into a wet one'.’ It would bo grossly unfair if she had not. And similar difficulties arise on every side of the rainmaker's path. Besides, what if some

crank got hold of the apparatus, and insisted upon pouring down rain upon the earth for forty days and forty nights, until the water rose fifteen cubits over the ion of the highest mountain Tho troubles i store for the world when the secret of .tapping the moisture reserves of tho atmosphero°is really discovered are simply endless. The present struggle for tho possession of tho land is a Quakers’ meeting to what the scramble for the circumambient air will become, and, if only to avert this calamity, the man with his gas-pipe who * sots forth to show how rain can be extracted from a blue sky ought to bo sternly discouraged. Besides, what about the thriving Industry of the weather prophets ?