54 DO THE CHANGES OP THE MOON AFFECT THE KAINFALL? 



The enquiry, the results of which I have thus attempted to 

 put before the members of this Society, will, I hope, be found 

 to be of some value, however slight, as a contribution towards 

 the investigation of an obscure but highly interesting 

 subject. 



Perhaps these remarks may induce others, more competent, 

 to pursue the enquiry in a more scientific manner, and more 

 exhaustively, than I have been able to do. 



It will, of course, be understood that the inferences deduced 

 from the appended tables are intended to apply only to the 

 place where the observations were made, namely — Hobart and 

 its vicinity. We may expect to get different results from 

 similar observations at other places, and it remains to be seen 

 whether the same laws hold good elsewhere under different 

 conditions, or whether they are so far modified by local 

 circumstances that each place, or group of places, has a law 

 of its own. 



In a work which I was reading a short time since, I came 

 upon this passage : — " It is a scientific fact that virtue and 

 vice are resultant upon the changes of weather. The police 

 of Buenos Ayres find that quarrelling and bloodshed are 

 more frequent when the wind blows from the north, that a 

 sort of moral derangement prevails while it continues. The 

 scientific explanation offered is, that this arises from some 

 malaria engendered in the marshes over which the wind 

 passes." (W. J. Acomb, Larger Hope Lectures, 156.) 



This opens up a wide field of study which has not, as far as 

 I know, been systematically cultivated. The present age 

 stands out prominently as one of disinterment. Buried cities, 

 such as Nineveh, Babylon, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Troy, have 

 been unearthed ; lost languages and literature have been 

 restored. If the same method of enquiry be applied to 

 immaterial things there can be no doubt that similar results 

 will follow. If we closely examine many of the things which 

 in past times were devoutly believed, but which most people 

 in these days look upon as exploded errors, we shall find that, 

 iust as gold is embedded in quartz and has to be separated 

 from it, in these old notions there are truths which only 

 require to be set free from the misconceptions which were 

 associated with them to be recognised as scientific facts. 

 Take, for instance, lunacy. The idea was that the aberration 

 of mind so-called, was occasioned by some malign influence of 

 the moon. Increased knowledge has shown that the causes 

 of insanity are very various, and that the moon has little, if 

 anything, to do with them ; but if I am not mistaken, many 

 mad people are peculiarly affected at certain states of the 

 moon, and the observation of this fact may have led to the 



