258 WEATHER MAKING, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 



They used to make a clue [skein] of thread, and tbey make divers knots 

 to be kiiit thereiu, and then they command to draw out of the clue to 

 three knots, more or less, as they will have the wind more soft or strong; 

 and for their misbelief fiends move the air and arise strong tempests, 

 or soft, as they draweth of the clue more or less knots; and sometimes 

 they move the wind so strongly that the wretches that believe in such 

 doings are drowned by the rightful doom of God." 



The elder bush is esj)ecially associated with weather making. The 

 witches were thought to make bad weather by stirring water with 

 branches of the elder. 



Still another remnant of ancient superstition is, according to Aubrey 

 (1090), to the eliect that "On Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and 

 thereabouts, when they farm their corn and want wind they cry ' Youle ! 

 youle! youle!' to invite it, which word, no doubt, is a corruption of 

 ^olus, the god of the winds." (Dr. E. Fletcher.) 



III. — Physical Methods. 



WEATHER MAKERS. 



What precedes relates to purely psychic methods of controlling the 

 weather or the elements. The collection which it presents has been 

 made in no spirit of disrespect, but solely in that of "the collection and 

 scientific comparison of facts. I have great respect for all sincere reli- 

 gious belief and great interest in folklore remnants — fragments of what 

 have once been great psychic structures — ruins about the tombs of the 

 ancients. What follows is intensely fin de siecle and treats of the par- 

 adoxer in a well-developed stage. The paradoxer deserves a respect to 

 be measured by the sufficiency of his information and the correctness 

 of his logic. He is a possible benefactor of the world, a potential great 

 man. Galileo was a paradoxer — very unwelcome to the Aristotelians 

 of his time. Kepler was a rank paradoxer to his contemporaries, and 

 Newton was a paradoxer to the Cartesians of his day. 



Time will not be spent on rash paradoxers in the field of weather 

 making. We shall only consider those who have some such guarantee 

 as a patent, an appropriation, or genuine learning. As an illustration 

 of the rash paradoxers, I will simply mention two, one the man who 

 proposed to destroy blizzards by a line of coal stoves along our northern 

 boundary from Eed River to the Continental Divide, and the other a 

 man who proposed to ameliorate the weather of New England and the 

 Canadian provinces by damming the Strait of Belle Isle. 



WEATHER MAKINGr. 



We pass first to the treatment for tornadoes. M. Weyher has made 

 laboratory tornadoes of a mild and gentle character, but they contain 

 no suggestion as to how to treat this patbologic phenomenon of the 

 weather. 



