FALSE NOTIONS IN REGARD TO THE WEATHER. 87 



FALSE NOTIONS IN REGARD TO THE WEATHER. 



BY ISAAC P. NOYES, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



The weather is one of the oldest, if not the oldest scientific subjects before 

 the world. The world thought about it, talked about it, wrote about it, and per- 

 haps wondered why it did not know more about a subject that was ever-present 

 with it. 



Nothing tangible presented itself whereby to understand this most common 

 of all subjects. Many of the more sensible people acknowledged that they knew 

 little or nothing about it and became incredulous to all pretended knowledge and 

 sayings in regard to this branch of human science. A few here and there kept a 

 record of it, in hopes, perhaps, that something favorable would thereby grow out 

 of their labors. 



Under these circumstances it is not surprising that a great many absurd and 

 false notions were entertained and handed down from generation to generation. 

 For example, the influence of the planets and the moon — the instinct of animals 

 in regard to foretelling the weather — the manner in which a storm clears off and 

 notions that time, as to night or day, made a great difference in the clearing off 

 of a storm. Men wrote whole books of hundreds of pages to prove something 

 they knew little or nothing about. They thought that the different quarters of 

 the moon must have some effect upon the weather. They also thought the weath- 

 er must repeat itself. They kept statistics. Through this process they imagined 

 that they saw certain resemblances between years, certain regular and irregular 

 periods. From this after-knowledge they conceived the idea of fore-knowledge and 

 attempted the role of prophets. The wiser ones soon discovered that this would 

 not do, that it was a difficult thing to ascertain what nature was going to do in 

 advance. They could not understand the reason why, still they had sense enough 

 to see the impossibility of such fore-knowledge being acquired. Nature, they 

 saw, did not repeat herself — she did not move in regular grooves. Notwithstand- 

 ing this a few continued to imagine that by some superior mathematics or better 

 reading of statistics, they could do what the rest of the world had failed to accom- 

 plish. 



After many years men became more and more interested in electricity; they 

 discovered more and more new properties pertaining to it. The years went by, 

 electricity came to the front and in the form of the telegraph became the chief 

 medium of news — indeed, the only medium of rapid news, far outstripping all 

 other mediums. Still the years went by — the old men continued to keep their 

 meteorological tables. Through this medium a few general facts were ascertain- 

 ed in regard to the weather, and that is all. It was too slow for gathering the 

 important facts in this department. But one thing was ascertained, and that was 

 that storms — at least some storms, travel in general lines from the west toward 

 the east. 



