FALSE NOTIONS IN REGARD TO THE WEATHER. 89 



In this connection I would respectfully call the reader's attention to the fact 

 that although the laws revealed by this beautiful map may appear new, it is only 

 the revelation that is new, the laws themselves are old and date from eternity, and 

 are therefore much older than all the absurd and false notions that have from 

 time to time, through want of proper information been held by the world. The 

 weather-map has revealed the information and therefore we are no longer in the 

 dark, but stand face to face with the eternal laws that have governed, do, and will 

 forever govern the meteorological economy of the world. 



The cycle and mathematical notions in regard to the weather, have been and 

 are still very generally believed in, and that too by men eminent in science. 

 Likewise the notion that the other planets, together with the moon, must have a 

 powerful influence upon our weather system, is still held by a large class of intel- 

 ligent persons. Before the advent of the weather-map this was no more surpris- 

 ing than that before the age of geography men should have had the queer notions 

 they did of the grouping of the land and water of the globe. One of the best 

 representations of these notions some time since appeared in one of the Washing- 

 ton papers. The author strongly advocated the theory that the weather repeats 

 itself in cycles of nineteen years, for the reason that the earth, the sun, and the 

 moon occupy the same relative position very nearly every nineteen years, and 

 the author of this idea attempts to prove it by what the weather has in some 

 respects appeared to him. Yet such important things as drouths seem to be an 

 exception. But in all such ingenious and unfounded theories the advocate there- 

 of has a ready excuse for exceptions. In this case it was the disturbing element 

 of the sun, moon and planets, and it would seem from his ideas, and others of 

 his class, that if we only had our mathematics perfected, or understood better how 

 to apply them to this subject, we might make weather prognostications a very 

 easy thing. 



This gentleman says, " If the sun and moon cause ever varying tidal waves 

 in the great ocean of waters they must produce similar but far greater and more 

 striking results on the still water and more flexible ocean of the earth's atmos- 

 phere. Nor can it be reasonably doubted that the attracting power of the larger 

 planets must exert a sensible effect on the great atmospheric ocean, though their 

 influence be entirely unappreciable on the watery one." 



This may appear like good reasoning to people not familiar with the subject; 

 for, through the influence of old-time notions and old almanacs, they have grown 

 up with the idea of " cycles" and that by the aid of some mysterious mathemat- 

 ics these " cycles" and influences could be determined quite accurately, and that 

 complete accuracy could be arrived at when the higher mathematical key was 

 found, and through mathematics they have believed that the world would be- 

 come profoundly weather-wise. 



Before the era of the weather-map, which daily reproduces the geography of 

 the atmosphere, these notions could not well have been contradicted even by the 

 wisest. They may not have believed them, but they had no facts by which to 

 disprove them. The weather-map reveals to us the impossibility of the weather 



