WEATHER PROGNOSTICS. 



have escaped), in supposing that this absurd affair has been 

 sanctioned by the authority of one of the illustrious astronomers 

 whose name it bears. Whether the table in question is really 

 the production of any person bearing that celebrated name we 

 cannot say ; but the public may be assured that neither of the 

 eminent astronomers who have rendered the name of Herschel 

 for ever memorable, has had any concern with it. 



It is astonishing, in this age of the diffusion of knowledge, 

 how susceptible the public mind is of excitement on any topic, 

 the principles of which do not lie absolutely on the surface of 

 the most ordinary course of elementary education. It was only 

 in the year 1832 that a general alarm spread throughout France, 

 lest Biela's comet in its progress through the solar system, 

 should strike the earth ; and the authorities in that country, 

 with a view to tranquillise the public, induced M. Arago, the 

 astronomer royal, to publish an essay on comets, written in a 

 familiar and intelligible style, to show the impossibility of such 

 an event. 



Several panics in England, connected with physical questions, 

 have occurred within our memory. There prevailed in London 

 a " water panic," during which the public was persuaded that 

 the water supplied to the metropolis was destructive to health 

 and life. While this lasted, the papers teemed with announce- 

 ments of patent filtering machines ; solar-microscope makers 

 displayed to the terrified Londoners troops of thousand-legged 

 animals disporting in their daily beverage ; publishers were busy 

 with popular treatises on entomology ; and the public was seized 

 with a general hydrophobia. It was in vain that Brande ana- 

 lysed the water at the Eoyal Institution, and Faraday attempted 

 to reason London into its senses. Knowledge ceased to be 

 power ; philosophy lost its authority. Time was, however, more 

 efficacious than science ; and the paroxysms of the disease 

 having passed through their appointed phases, the people were 

 convalescent. There was at another time a panic against atmo- 

 spheric air, during which the inhabitants of the great metropolis 

 (in a literal sense) scarcely dared to breathe. The combustion 

 of coal was denounced as the great evil in this case. Calcula- 

 tions were circulated of the number of cubic feet of sulphurous 

 gas taken into the lungs of each adult inhabitant per annum ; 

 the properties of carbonic acid were discussed behind counters ; 

 patent furnaces were plentifully invented and advertised for 

 sale ; and parliament was urged to pass a bill for the purifi- 

 cation of the atmosphere, and to compel all who used fires to 

 consume their own smoke. 



In 1838, the English public, who are especially excitable, were 

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