Cuiuffire anfr 1Ratn 145 



practice owing to bad weather, and the summer is 

 generally devoted to manoeuvres, so that the spring 

 and autumn are the more suitable periods for target 

 practice." A picture, I remember, of the Fleet at 

 Spithead firing a salute at noon on Coronation Day, 

 1911, had an announcement affixed to it that "the 

 thunderous discharge had the effect of bringing down 

 the rain." A correspondent recently wrote from the 

 north to tell me that in his forty years' practical 

 experience of gun-firing he had never known a heavy 

 discharge to fail in bringing down the rain. 



There occurs in the diary of an Essex farmer, the 

 following : " If I could make the weather I would 

 have a soaking wet time every Saturday night during 

 the summer, and if the rain continued on into the 

 Sunday for a considerable time I could regard it 

 through a window with perfect equanimity. I wonder 

 how it is that all those people who work with ex- 

 plosive rain-balloons and hailstorm -guns, and inven- 

 tions of that sort, have not yet been able to give us a 

 shower when we need it. Yesterday there was a 

 tremendous cannonading at Shoeburyness for an hour 

 or two, and as it is only some ten miles away as the 

 crow flies, our windows shake and rattle as if it were 

 an earthquake, but yet it does not bring rain, and the 

 glass is rising." 



Those last few words may explain everything. 

 When the barometer shows that rain need not be 

 expected, perhaps not all the cannonading in the 

 world will produce it. On the other hand, when the 

 glass is sinking and there are indications of rain (I am 

 associating the two in a broad sense only), it may be 

 that a violent disturbance of the air, such as heavy 



