GREAT FIRES AND RAIN-STORMS. 207 



concludes : " Sunday. So to my office, there to write clown my 

 journall, and take leave of my brother, whom I send back this after- 

 noon, though raining ; which it hath not done a good icJvile before." 



After reading this, we turn to the account of the burning of Moscow. 

 But this occurred in September, and the equinoctial gales were blowing 

 fiercely at the time. If we look into the history of land and sea fights, 

 we find many striking and apparent confirmations of the truth of the 

 popular belief. Froude concludes his description of the fight at Flores, 

 1591, as follows: "Nor did the matter end without a sequel awful as 

 itself." Sea-battles have been often followed by storms, and without 

 a miracle ; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards and the English 

 alike believed, or without one, as we moderns would prefer believing. 

 "There ensued on this action a tempest so terrible as was never seen 

 or heard the like before." The human mind is undoubtedly prone to 

 connect great calamities together, and to believe that the one follow- 

 ing depended in some mysterious way upon the one preceding. 



We turn now to the great fire at Chicago. It was telegraphed to 

 London, England, that " this fire was chiefly checked on the third or 

 fourth day by the heavy and continuous down-pour of rain, which, it is 

 conjectured, was partly due to the great atmospheric disturbances 

 which such an extensive fire would cause, especially when we are told 

 that the season just previous to the outbreak of the fire had been par- 

 ticularly dry." In an article published in the " Journal of the Franklin 

 Institute," July, 1872, by Prof. I. A. Lapham, assistant to the Chief- 

 Signal Officer II. S. A., entitled "The Great Fires of 1871 in the North- 

 west," we find the following in regard to the burning of Chicago : 

 " During all this time twenty-four hours of continuous conflagration 

 upon the largest scale no rain was seen to fall, nor did any rain fall 

 until four o'clock the next morning ; and this was not a very consider- 

 able ' down-pour,' but only a gentle rain, that extended over a large dis- 

 trict of country, differing in no respect from the usual rains. The 

 quantity, as reported by meteorological observers at various points, 

 was only a few hundredths of an inch. It was not until four days 

 afterward that any thing like a heavy rain occurred. It is therefore 

 quite certain that this case cannot be referred to as an example of the 

 production of rain by a great fire. Must we therefore conclude," says 

 Prof. Lapham, "that fires do not produce rain, and that Prof. Espy was 

 mistaken in his theory on that subject ? By consulting his reports 

 (Fourth Report, 1857, p. 29), it will be found that he only claimed that 

 fires would produce rain under favorable circumstances of high dew- 

 point, and a calm atmosphere. Both of these important conditions 

 were wanting at Chicago, where the air was almost entirely destitute 

 of moisture, and the wind was blowing a gale. To produce rain, the 

 air must ascend until it becomes cool enough to condense the moisture, 

 which then falls in the form of rain. But here the heated air could 

 not ascend very far, being forced off in nearly an horizontal direction 



