273 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE INEVITABLE DRY SEASONS. 



The seasons change and the favors of nature are given 

 or withheld by the operation of laws or influences of which 

 we know little. No man can know just when the storm 

 will come or when the drouth will follow. But we do know 

 that, in a general way, long periods of abundance of rain 

 are likely to be followed by periods of drouth, and for this 

 we must always be prepared. 



We clip a fugative item from the daily newspapers in 

 March, 1907, as below, in which Prof. Willis L. Moore, 

 chief of the United States weather bureau at Washington, 

 is quoted as giving warning of a drouth in the western 

 country. We give it not so much that this prediction has 

 value or causes surprise, but for reasons which are indi- 

 cated later. The item is: 



"Prof. Moore predicts that the country is due for a long 

 period of drouth. The present long period of abundant 

 rainfall over the great cereal plains, about six years, is the 

 longest of which the weather bureau has any records 

 Prof. Moore is certain that there will be a shortage in rain- 

 fall soon equal to amount to the excess during the last six 

 years. This is based on the records of the bureau, which 

 show that the average rainfall during the first ten years of 

 a period of thirty, forty, or fifty years is precisely the same 

 us the average of the last ten. Many persons write to the 

 bureau, saying that they have been advised to buy land in 

 a region formerly classed as arid. It is offered for sale to 



