PROFESSOR WIGGINS AND HIS STORM PROPHECY.

Kumara Times, Issue 2037, 9 March 1883, Page 2

PROFESSOR WIGGINS AND HIS STORM PROPHECY.

[From “Passing Notes” in the Otago Witness.] A Professor Wiggins with L.L.D. to his name, and described in a paragraph going the round of the papers, as Astronomer to the Canadian Finance Department, has written a letter to President Arthur warning him of a terrible storm which is to pass over the United States from the 9th to the 11th of this present month of March. The Atlantic is also to catch it, “No point out of harbour in the whole area ” of that ocean will be safe from the fury of the hurricane ; “ therefore,” adds the professor, “ I take the great liberty of representing to your Excellency the advisability of ordering all U.S. [ships into safe harbours not later than the sth ”of the said month. This is really very good of the professor, and I am clearly of opinion that there was no need to call the liberty he takes a great liberty ; for, in the first place, he tells Mr Arthur that the “ storm will be preeminently the greatest that has visited this continent since the days of your illustrious first President;” and in the second place, the man who can predict such a storm some two mouths beforehand is a much more important personage than even the first magistrate of the great republic. The humility of Professor E. Stone Wiggins, L.L.D., is therefore altogether superfluous, however ornamental it may be to his character. But lam at a loss to know what use the Canadian Finance Department has for an astronomer. Does your mother keep" a mangle ? would not in every, case be an irrelevant question ; but I should certainly consider it an insult to ask a Chancellor of the Exchequer or a Colonial Treasurer if he kept an astronomer. I should as soon think of asking if he kept a gorilla or a hippopotamus. But the Americans, even the Canadian part of them, are a peculiar people, and it is possible that they may have discovered some occult connection between astronomy, and finance. We speak, indeed, of the “ silver ” moon and the “ golden ” orb of day, and it may be that the Canadians expect the philosopher’s stone, which would doubtless be a great boon to the finance department, to fall from the starry spaces, and so keep an astronomer on the look-oat. Or is their financial year regulated by the stars ? I give it up, and refer the solution of the mystery to Mr Beverly or some professional star-gazer. What again has an astronomer got to do with the weather ? His vocation lies far above the region of -storms. It is men who go up in balloons, like the late Mr Glashier, and watch the incubations of tempests in the higher atmosphere that do the most of our weather-prophesying. If astronomers did not disdain such mundane matters they would indeed have a capital chance of seeing what goes on in the upper air on their way to the main haunt and region of their observations among the twinkling stars. But it is one thing to see a storm brewing in the sky, and quite another to forsee the same long before the process has begun ; and this seems to be Professor Wiggins’ prerogative—a direct gift I should say, from heaven. No Yankee, as far as I am aware, has ever invented spectacles that would enable him to see so far ahead; and lam obliged' to fall back upon the supernatural origin of the professor’s gift—unless indeed it be identical with that of the almanac-makers ! In which case the storm would not be likely to happen to a day; and I fancy that President Arthur, though he is said to be somewhat superstitious, will not suspend the American shipping trade for a whole week at the request of Professor E. Stone Wiggins, L.L.D.