ACTION OF MAN ON THE WEATHER. 635 
laws of nature, and a ready perception of analogies and rela- 
tions not obvious to minds less philosophically constituted. 
They have unquestionably contributed essentially to the ad- 
vancement of meteorological science. 
The possibility that the distribution and action of electricity 
may be considerably modified by long lines of iron railways 
and telegraph wires, is a kindred thought, and in fact rests 
much on the same foundation as the belief in the utility of light- 
ning-rods, but such influence is too obscure and too uncertain 
to have been yet demonstrated, though many intelligent obser- 
vers believe that sensible meteorological effects have been pro- 
duced by it. 
It is affirmed that battles and heavy cannonades are generally 
followed by rain and thunder-storms, and Powers has collected 
much evidence on this subject,* but the proposition does not 
seem to be by any means established. 
Resistance to Great Nutural Forces. 
I have often spoken of the greater and more subtile natural 
forces, and especially of geological agencies, as powers beyond 
human guidance or resistance. This is no doubt at present 
true in the main, but man has shown that he is not altogether 
impotent to struggle with even these mighty servants of na- 
ture, and his unconscious as well as his deliberate action may 
in some cases have increased or diminished the intensity of 
their energies. It is a very ancient belief that earthquakes are 
more destructive in districts where the crust of the earth is solid 
and homogeneous, than where it is of a looser and inore inter- 
rupted structure. Aristotle, Pliny the elder, and Seneca be- 
* War and the Weather, or the Artificial Production of Rain, Chicago, 1871. 
Paifer proposed, as early as 1814, arrangements for producing rain by 
firing cannon and exploding shells in the air. Hin wunderbarer Traum die 
Frucht, barkei durch willkirlichen Regen zu befordern, Metz, 1814. See, on the 
question of the possibility of influencing the weather by artificial means, Lon- 
don Quarterly Journal of Science, xxix., p. 126, and Nature, Feb. 16, 1871, 
p. 306, 
