WAR AND THE WEATHER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 53, 29 October 1914, Page 4

WAR AND THE WEATHER.

Of the very numerous popular beliefs which.may be said to bo,,world-wide, i but are based merely on casual observation and not upon established j facts, that which associates the oc-i ourrenco of war with the artificial production of rain is just now being subjected to a severe ’tost (says the) “Morning Post”). What was the I origin of the idea it is now impossible j to determine. 'IJio history of explosives takes us back into the far dis--1 taut past, and we may he certain that in the course of ages there have been many instances of great battles being fought in more or less heavy rainstorms. These would he remembered, while those which occurred under more favorable atmospheric conditions would bo ignored. That rain fell during the battle of Waterloo was felt to be a strong—an overwhelming—proof , of the truth of the old notion. Since then it has been used over and over again as an argument in favor of spending money in attempts to manufacture rain for tile benefit ol fanners during periods of droughty weather. Both in the Northern and iu the Southern Hemisphere large sums have been spent in conducting experiments with high explosives shot up to great heights, where it was thought the violent concussions would prove more effective than at ground level. But experiment after experiment has had to be abandoned because the results were not in accordance with tin theory advanced. In this country, although the belief is as widely entertained as in other countries, no special investigation has been carried out. We have, however, at our own doors ample proof of the fallacy of the popular idea. As was pointed out in these columns a year or two ago, the driest corner of the British Isles is the north shore of the Thames Estuary, the rainfall over Essex being the smallest in the Kingdom. But Shoeburyness is in Essex, and it is the testing ground for big guns, which are fired all the year round, so that the locality ought to be, according to the belief, very wet, instead of vefyi dry. The present war affords abundant testimony iu the same direction. Never in the world’s history has there .been so much firing of guns of all sizes as during the past five weeks. Practically every day there has been an almost continuous roar of cannon over hundreds of square miles, yet * the vast volume of hideous noise has been accompanied by most glorious summer weather, brilliant sunshine, and intense heat, only interrupted on one or two occasions by a little raiiy Thus far the war has been carried on in clouds of dust, and not in quagmires. The evidence is sufficiently conclusive to justify the abandonment of the old-world idea, only, as suggested above, people l are apt to 1 forget and to ignore instances which I arc not in favor of their pet beliefs. !If armies totalling millions of men ' cannot by their combined efforts at making a big noise compel the clouds to precipitate their moisture, we rest assured that the puny efforts of a. farmer with a shot-gun or a

specially-designed noise-producing caij- [ non will prove futile. The natural ~ forces that cause rain work in absolute silence. Occasionally, ’ll Jeod very rarely, thunder accompanies ram, but it never causes rain.