48 M. W. Harrington— Weather making. 
side, notably in rain making, which can be pointed out here as 
well as elsewhere. It is this: The phenomenon to be produced 
cannot probably be controlled as to area covered, and may occur 
where it is not wanted. If we are clothing merchants and I 
‘arry over too large a stock of winter clothing into late spring, I 
may order a cold wave to help me reduce my stock. But you may 
have exhausted your winter stock and wish to have warm weather 
to start ygur summer stock. My cold wave affects your trade 
seriously ; I may be sued for damages. Such a state of things is 
said to have actually happened in Kansas, where a rain maker 
was refused payment by his employer because of failure of con- 
tract, and was sued by a neighbor of the employer because his 
crops were washed out of the ground. Should the weather 
maker prosper he will often find himself very much embarrassed 
until our law makers have caught up with our advance in the 
arts, and the volume of the statute books has been materially 
enlarged. 
RAIN MAKING. 
We come now to the subject of rain making, which has at- 
tracted more attention, been more tried, and has more history 
than any other one method of weather making. It has attained 
the dignity of at least two patents and two congressional appro- 
priations. A bibliography of the subject is appended, contain- 
ing 64 titles, two of which refer to books devoted to this subject, 
respectively by Power and Gathman. 
First Method.—To clear the way for the American history we 
may note here as method number one a French method reported 
in the Comptes Rendus for October 23, 1895. M Baudouin sent 
a note to the French Academy of Sciences in which he wrote 
that in Algeria, earlier in that year, he used a kite to obtain 
electric connection with a cloud at the height of about 4,000 
feet. As soon as this connection was made a few drops of rain 
fell and a local fog formed. These disappeared on breaking the 
connection, presumably by withdrawing the kite from the cloud. 
M Baudouin had obtained some rain in Algeria in 1876 by the 
same method. I know of no other experiments in this direction, 
nor do they involve anything in opposition to knowledge already 
-aequired. It is a fair field for experiment, and it is remarkable 
that M Baudouin’s experiments have not attracted more atten- 
tion in the United States. 
