Vol. XVIIl. No. 453. 



THE AQRICULTURAL NEWS. 



287 



'Potatoes everywhere are growing vigorously, la the 

 black soil some fields of yams have grown irregularly and 

 have been supplied with potato slips. 



' During the weather of July, the .■'pires of the yams in 

 sr.me peasants' holdings in Uh ist Church were so nipped 

 that they planted cotton through them so as to ensure a 

 crop of some kind'. 



THE WEATHER AND THE MOON. 



Barbados is luckily situated in regard to e.xperts. 

 It not oi:ly possesses expert agriculcurist.s, expert 

 politicians, and expert road-makers, but also an expert 

 astrologer, who is at the '■ame time an expert weather- 

 prophet. The heavy rains on August 25 last were fore- 

 told by this astrologer, who based his prognostica- 

 tions on the phase of the m jou at that date. This 

 has naturally created a considerable impre.ssion 

 upon a large number of people, and we therefore 

 feel it our duty to reproduce the followitig extract 

 taken Irom the Monthly Weather Review of the 

 Weather Bureau, United States of America: — 



During the past century there has been such steady 

 progress in iill branches of science that the more intelligent 

 portion of the community has abandoned those not ims 

 with regard to astrology, alchemy, spontaneous generation 

 witchcraft,and other philosophies, 'hat were formerly accepted 

 by the most learned. The ditfasion of educition has raised 

 the child.en of the present generation above the level of the 

 philosophers of a former generation. And yet we Inve 

 seen it demonstrated aaain and again ihxt the pipular 

 majority does not fully appreciate the extent of our present 

 knov^le Ige of the laws of ihn weather, and is still litble to 

 resort to uiisciemitic niL-tho'is in the hope of accomplishing 

 that to which science has not yet attained. 



We have seen communities in Amer'ci and Australii 

 carried a.vay with the idea that cannonading can produce 

 rain or in Europe that the ringing of church b-lls or 

 the offering ' f prayers can avert droughts and floods. In 

 Southern Europe the agricu'turists are but just recovering 

 from the strange belief that h dl ca i be prevented bv shootinf 

 rings of smoke towards the clouds. During the pist ten 

 years a wealthy engineer of R^:ssii has devoted his fortune 

 to the conversion of the people to his idea that the moon 

 controls the weather, and sj seriously does his alvocjcy 

 of this error atfect the uneducated agricultural comm inity 

 that the Director of the Weather Service at OJessa 

 (Klosfov.-ky) has gone to llie trouble of publishing an 

 elaborate staten.ent of the errors in fact and theory coinmiited 

 by this engineer. He shows very clearly that Demtchinsky's 

 method of predicting the weather by liinir periods amounts 

 to nothing more than predicting an average c )nditioii, an 

 average which very rarely occurs, whereas, the dep irtures 

 from it are very frequent. The verifications ot these 

 jrredictions are like the combinations in an ordinary gam ! 

 of chance, where there is an equil number of heais and 

 tails f.r hits and misses 



As the collection of ni" eorolo^ical sta'isics depends 

 largely upon the voluntary work of thousinds of unpaid 

 observer-, it is to be feared that the good work we are doini; 

 in America may be seriously interrupicd, if erroneous visw.-? 

 are allowed to have an influence in this country as profound 

 as they seem lo have in .'-Southern I'ui^siii. 



We cannot repeat too often and too clearly t' e general 

 proiiositibn that mclecrology is to be advanced only by 



studying in details the effects on the atmosphere of insola- 

 tion, radiation, the diurnal rotation and annual revolatilO 

 of the earth, and the presence of continents and oceans. 



Since the above was written — sixteen years ago — 

 great advances have been made, especially during the 

 war, in the study of weather by investigating the 

 upper atmosphere by means of aircraft TbQ atmos- 

 phere is really an ocean of gas, and we live at the 

 bottom of it as some animals live at the bottHn o( the 

 sea. We can no more obtain a correct iden of the 

 movements and properties of the air by investigation 

 at the bottom only, any more than we can of the sea 

 by confining our studies to observations at the surface. 

 Theie is not much scope for weather fore- 

 casting in the West Indies, except in the case of 

 cyclonic disturbances around August and September. 

 In the usual way the weather is very uniform. Btit 

 in northern countries there is, and the meteorological 

 services have reached a high standard of efficiency, 

 This has been attained, not through astr.>logy and 

 witchcraft, but through the application of scientific 

 ideas, and the colleccion and critic J study of an 

 enormous number of observations. 



A MATTER OF RAINFALL. 



We reproduce below a letter to the Editor of 

 the Barbad :>s Adrocate, which will astonish those 

 readers who are not familiar with the weight of rain : — 



Dear Sir, — -The foil nving may be of interest to the 

 gen'-Tal public. It is a smill sum in arithmetic, referring 

 to the weight of rain on .i particular aiea: 



I acre-— 4,840 sq yds. =4 840 x 9 x 141 sq. inches. 

 If cue rain is 1 inch deep this of course represents the 

 number of at/'ic inches of rain over 1 acre. Tae above 

 number in cubic feet is 



4,840x9x144 



N'j.v 1 cubic foot of water weighs 100,00.3 Db. .-, weight 



3,630x1,000 

 111 tons = — j-7^ — ^vT(7 = 101] tons (nearly) 



Thus lOinchfs of rain, im an average estate of, say, 

 1200 acres, weiglu-^ 101 > x 10 x 200 tons= 202,500 tons. 

 Two hundri d and two thousand, five hundred tons ! 



Xo wonder the cittages ^o I ' ' Ildvius.' 



= 3,630 cubic feet. 



A Durable Fibre —A plant called the oloaa 

 ' (Totichardin Infifu ii) grows only in Hawaii, and supplies a 

 textile libre generally considered to be the strongest and 

 most durable known. The olona belongs to the moisture- 

 loving group of ihe Hawaiian flora so common in the moun- 

 tain forest. Tue fibre is used for numerous purpose-', espe- 

 ciilly for fishing lines and nets on account of its great resist- 

 ance to salt-water Tlie fibre is removed by maceration of 

 the stems in running water, and by removing ihe pulp by 

 scraping. The chief (pialities of tlie fibre are: its great 

 tensile strength eiglit times greater than that of hemp ; its 

 great resistance to salt water : its pliability and consequently, 

 IS suitability for spinuinj; tjy hand. (The Inter wilioiial 

 Rc:'ieti' of tht Science and I ractice of Ap-icu'lurt ioi S&ayi'xrj 

 1919). ■ • ' ' 



