4 
Espey’s Plan. 51 
awe and deprecation. In short, the scene presented a more complete 
triumph of philosophy over ignorance than I could have supposed it 
possible to have been produced anywhere in the nineteenth century, and 
most especially anywhere in our enlightened Republic. 
We often fired the saw-grass marshes afterward; and whenever there 
Was no wind stirring, we were sure to get a shower; and I say with per- 
fect confidence that we never had a shower in April or May at any other 
time. Sometimes when there was a breeze, it would carry the smoke 
toward the horizon, where there would seem to be a fall of rain. 
Kspy dwelt on this theory with great devotion, and in 1845 
published a special letter addressed “To the Frtends of Science ” 
in which he proposed a plan for practical rain production. As 
the paper in question is now very rare and _ his plan possesses 
some features of interest, I quote it here : 
Let masses of timber to the amount of forty acres for every twenty 
miles be prepared and fired simultaneously every seven days in the 
summer, on the west of the United States, in a line of six or seven hun- 
dred miles long from north to south; then the following results seem 
highly probable, but not certain until the experiment is made: A rain 
of great length north and south will commence near or on the line of 
fires; this rain will travel eastward; it will not break up till it reaches 
far into the Atlantic ocean ; it will rain over the whole country east of 
the place of beginning; it will rain only a short time in any one place; 
it will not rain again until the next seventh day; it will rain enough and 
not too much in any one place; it will not be attended with violent wind, 
neither on land nor on the Atlantic ocean; there will be no hail nor tor- 
nadoes at the time of the general rain nor intermediate ; there will be no 
destructive floods, nor will the waters ever become very low ; there will be 
no more oppressive heats nor injurious colds; the farmers and mariners 
will always know before the rains when they will commence and when 
they will terminate; all epidemic diseases originating from floods and 
subsequent droughts will cease ; the proceeds of agriculture will be greatly 
increased, and the health and happiness of the citizens will be much 
promoted. These, I say, are the probable—not certain—results of the 
plan proposed—a plan which could be carried into operation for a sum 
which would not amount to half a cent a year to each individual in the 
United States ; a plan which, if successful, would benefit in a high degree 
not merely the landsman, but every mariner that plies the Atlantic. If 
this scheme should appear too gigantic to commence with, let the trial 
be first made along the Alleghany mountains; and let forty acres of four 
ten-acre lots be fired every seven days through the summer in each of 
the counties of McKean, Clearfield, Cambria, and Somerset, in Pennsyl- 
vania; Alleghany, in Maryland ; and Hardy, Pendleton, Bath, Alleghany, 
and Montgomery, in Virginia. The ten-acre lots should be, as nearly as 
conyenient, from one to four miles apart, in the form of a square, so that 
8—Nart. Grog. Maa., vor. VI, 1894. 
