110 DISCOVERY CH. 



striking of a match in a room." The belief has been 

 shown over and over again to have no foundation, yet 

 rain-wizards are still able to carry on their profession 

 even in civilised countries. 



The possibility that rain or drought can be produced 

 by human means is never questioned by barbarians, who 

 have their professional rain-makers and great medicine 

 men, and superstitiously attribute to them all power 

 over Nature. A few years ago elaborate experiments to 

 determine whether rain could be caused by explosion were 

 made in connection with the United States Government, 

 at an expense of thousands of pounds, but the results 

 proved that nothing of the nature of rain was produced 

 by the bombardment. In fact, rain falls according to 

 the general weather conditions existing at a place, and 

 is altogether independent of the puny efforts of man to 

 change the nature of the clouds. When rain does occur 

 in the wake of a rain-wizard, a glance at the meteoro- 

 logical chart of the day will show that it is a natural 

 consequence of the distribution of temperature and 

 pressure, and is usually predicted by the Meteorological 

 Office. It is strange that many people ignore this fact, 

 and ascribe any rainfall that may take place to the acts 

 of the professional rain-maker. 



Many educated people believe that rain follows great 

 battles, the general opinion being that the noise of the 

 guns or the combustion of the explosives in some way 

 affects the clouds, and causes them to precipitate their 

 moisture. During the first ten weeks of the European 

 War, when there was little rain, though heavy gun-firing 

 was almost continuous, nothing was heard of the belief, 

 but when this was followed by an excessively wet period 

 we were again assured by the newspapers that big battles 

 invariably produce rain. The human tendency to forget 



