June 30, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



935 



Popular Science Monthly'^ and in the Jour- 

 nal of Geography.'^ The decrease in military- 

 activity at the opening of winter indicates 

 the deterrent effect of winter weather on 

 military operations. As the speed of move- 

 ments in the field is dependent primarily on 

 the condition of the ground, cold weather in 

 winter is almost invariably accompanied by 

 greater military activity. Since the Russian 

 theater has colder and drier weather in winter 

 than that in the west, operations there are less 

 hindered by mud. On the other hand, in au- 

 tumn the flooding rains present great difficul- 

 ties in the east. The prospect of the usual au- 

 tumnal rains and the intrenchment difficulties 

 of the winter probably spurred the Germans 

 and Austrians to their remarkable activity in 

 the summer of 1915 even in spite of heavy 

 mud. 



At great altitudes, meteorological hindrances 

 are much more acutely felt. High mountains 

 mean cold and snow even in summer. Also 

 mountains have more clouds, more rain and 

 more thunderstorms than the lowlands. In 

 winter, fighting is extremely difficult. Opera- 

 tions in the Alps, Carpathians, Balkans and 

 Caucasus have almost always been mentioned 

 in the same breath with the unfavorable 

 weather conditions. 



Furthermore, too great dryness makes opera- 

 tions difficult anywhere. Thus on Gallipoli 

 peninsula and in Mesopotamia there was a 

 scarcity of water, and the dust was almost un- 

 bearable in the summer dry season. The diffi- 

 culties of operations in deserts are such as to 

 make Egypt fairly safe from attack. The story 

 of the operations in Mexico is not without 

 mention of the winds, dust, sand and heat of 

 the desert. 



For air and naval engagements, foggy con- 

 ditions are generally chosen. This has been 

 shown abundantly in the Zeppelin raids on 

 England, the aeroplane raids of the French in 

 Germany, and in the infrequent naval attacks 

 on coasts. For the use of asphyxiating gases, 



5 December, 1914, pp. 604 to 613. 



6 February, 1915, pp. 169 to 171 ; March, 1915, 

 pp. 209 to 216; November, 1915, pp. 71 to 76; 

 June, 1916, pp. 374 to 384. 



wind conditions must be just right: steady, 

 moderate, and from the proper quarter. 



On the effects of battles on rainfall, the ex- 

 cessive raininess of the winter of 1914 to 1915 

 in the British Isles and weather anomalies else- 

 where have occasioned some comment. Charles 

 Harding presented before the Royal Meteoro- 

 logical Society' a summary of the weather con- 

 ditions for eight stations in Great Britain 

 and eight continental ones for the period Au- 

 gust, 1914, to April, 1915. In connection with 

 the discussion as to the cause of the extraordi- 

 narily heavy rainfall which was experienced 

 in England, Dr. H. R. Mill, director of the 

 British Rainfall Organization, made the fol- 

 lowing statement: 



The vastness of the work done by the quiet 

 processes of nature requires only to be realized in 

 order to show the incalculable improbability of 

 gunfire in Prance producing a wet winter in Eng- 

 land. Take the ease of the three and a half inches 

 of rain which fell in excess of the average in De- 

 cember over 58,000 square miles of England and 

 Wales. This quantity is 203,000 square mile inches 

 or 13,126,920,000 tons. At winter temperatures, 

 saturated water vapor would form about 1 per cent, 

 of the mass of the atmosphere containing it, hence 

 the minimimi quantity of air which must have been 

 carried over England and Wales in December, 

 1914, must have exceeded 1,300,000,000,000 tons. 

 The amount of force required even to deviate the 

 direction of moving masses of this magnitude is 

 surely far beyond that which can be exerted even 

 by nations at war. 



Professor Cleveland Abbe in the Popular 

 Science Monthly, January, 1911, shows by lab- 

 oratory experiments that the firing of cannon 

 or dynamite to produce rain can not possibly 

 succeed. The Scientific American, October 24, 

 1914, contains an instructive article on the 

 subject; and Professor McAdie in the Scien- 

 tific Monthly, February, 1916, gives a brief 

 summary of the question. 



HEAVY SNOWFALL IN NEW ENGLAND 



During the past winter the snowfall in 

 parts of New England exceeded all previous 

 records (since 1873) for any winter. The 



'' Quarterly Journal, October, 1915, pp. 337 to 

 348. 



