THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1910. THE FLOODS AND THE COMET.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9715, 10 February 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1910. THE FLOODS AND THE COMET.

The appalling flood effects reported from France by cable cause those from which this State is now suffering to shrink into comparative insignificance, remarks the "Sydney Daily Telegraph." Not because the area of destruction is oftarger proportions, but by reason or the greater number of people living within it. Had Paris been built on the Namoi instead of ~>n the Seine, the damage would have perhaps been even greater than that which the cables record. Similarly, bad the harmless seismic disturbance in the ocean bed. which was registered recently, been beneath a city instead of where t was the world would be now shuddering with the horror of the result. Departures from what we regard as Nature's ordinary routine are occurring constantly in one place or another but it is only when the area affected happens'to be thickly populated that they involve big catastrophies. And for that reason people are apt to view such events out of their natural perspective. Thus the cable reports that in France the floods now devastating the nation, and particularly its capital, are attributed to the influence of the comet. In what way this could produce any such effect upon the Earth does not appear, but if the comet was responsible for excessive rain in one place a not unreasonable assumption would be that it would cause the unwelcome downpour to be general. Why should a comet discrinrjinate between Paris and Madrid or between Tamworth and Temora? If the rains whi'h caused the Paris floud tou'k i.lace in the centre of Auwualia ur nuywhere else where they did no damape to excite attention, no one would think of attributing them to the comet, just as tbat re.iote body of.gas is held

btemeless for the earthquake under the oceanbed, whereas had the seismic disturbance shaken down a big European city it would certainly have been charged with the offence, though without a bit more reason. The extent to which the causes of any natural phenomena concatenate throughout the universe, it is, of course, impossible to say, but to suppose that the flooding of either Paris or Moree was a direct result of the recrudescence of Halley's comet or the 'nnes comet would not be a bit more reasonable than to blame it for the defeat of Sydney on Saturday in the inter-State University cricket match.