THE RAIN THEORY.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3770, 5 September 1907, Page 3

THE RAIN THEORY.

Professor E. Stone Wiggins, of Ottawa, who has carefully studied the weather of Canada for twenty years, believes that the cold and wet summer which is afflicting all parts of the world, is due to the existence of an unrecognised satellite of the earth —in other words, a second moon.

Professor Wiggins claims to have discovered this second moon in 1882. In the New York Tribune, on June 6th, 1884, he claimed the discovery, and declared that the sun was eclipsed on May 16th, the sky being perfectly cloudless and the visible moon being in another quarter of the heavens. Astronomers laughed at him, but Major A. B. Rogers, who was surveying the projected line of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, in a letter to Sir Sandford Fleming, said ; “ Noticing the obscurity of the sun on Mav 16th, I called the attention of the whole party to the striking phenomenon, stating it could not be a regular eclipse, as it lacked several days of the new moon.” Professor Wiggins describes his dark moon as having an immense carbon atmosphere, in which the sun develops little or no light. Several times in New Zealand and North America the existence for about twenty minutes of “ a green crescent moon of the most brilliant yet delicate shade” has been reported. Professor Wiggins ascribes the bad weather to the extra pull exerted on the earth when the dark moon and the visible moon are in line and nearest the earth.