212 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. I^September i, 1891. 
oorreot, as applied to us, the Secretary replied: 
' If L could tell how to cast the weather for every 
subdiyision of the king lom 1 should be very clever, 
as, of course, the climates vary in different dis- 
tricts from local causes.' As you sir, say [i. e., 
B. A. Prootor], ' these daily forecasts are not to be 
depended upon, and are apparently only a matter 
of guess %York, and so had better be dropped, as, 
for reference and utility, they are proved to be 
utterly worthless.' " To this another writer (Cap- 
tain Noble, a leading astronomer of our day), adds : 
" If we are &atiefied with the return which the 
British nation receives for the annual sum of 
£15,000 expended on so called ' Meteorology,' we 
must — like the Scotchman in the parable, — be vera 
thankfu' for sma' maireies " The Society's forecasts 
were deduced from daily telegraphic reports received 
from all parts of England and the Continent — 
data which no private individual could ever hope 
to collect, and yet, their labour was all in vain 1 
Notwithstanding all this, however, the popular 
belief in the moon's control of the weather dies 
hard, and now and then an effort ia made by a 
competent authority to instruct the public on this 
abiding superstition, Such a paper has only just 
fallen into my hands, though published, I believe, a 
year or two ago. It is written by Mr. John Westwood 
Oliver, who deals with the subject in all its bearings 
in a true spirit of science, seeking not only to des- 
troy error, but, wherever possible, to uphold truth 
as found in popular sayings. For this purpose he 
divides his arguments into : " (1) Lunar notions 
that are utterly absurd ; and (2) those that are 
explicable by the aid of physical principles, and are 
therefore rational and useful in practice." I shall 
scarcely do more, in this short paper, than surn- 
marize these "notions," adding the cream of his 
remarks, and a few obaervatious of my own. To 
merely enumerate all the popular sayings regarding 
the " moon," would require a volume to itself; but 
here we have to do only with moon-myths attri- 
buting lunar influence to the weather. Nearly all 
weather sayings are of the nature of predictions, 
otherwise of what use are they ? Such as are to be 
found in "Hersohel's Weather Tables." 
J, W. Oliver says : "To the fii-st class belongs the 
idea, in its various forms, of a direct lunar in- 
fluence. The weather will be such and such, not 
because the moon's reflection of light is greater or 
smaller, not because her radiation of heat is more 
for less, nor because her position with respect to the 
earth is nearer or farther away, but simply because " 
she ' changes ' between certain arbitrary hours." 
Upon this Mr. Oliver remarks: "The lunar influence 
assumed here must be of an occult nature, as 
there ia no pretence of physical agency (which 
Science demands) in the matter. The principle in- 
volved must be an astrological one, for in reality the 
moon is ' changing ' every instant of time from 
new to full, and from lull to new again, the 
'quarters' being only stages in the process spe- 
cially marked for the sake of convenience. But 
we are asked to believe that only these conven- 
tional ' changes ' rule the weather. " To this he 
add? : " Need the British public bo assured that no 
Buch convenient orderliness in weather pheno- 
mena exists, and that the ' changes ' of the moon 
are not confined to England, nor to any one 
country" — nor, I would add, to any one locality. 
The " changes " take place simultaneously all the 
world over. Who, may I ask, has not brain power 
enough to reason out the consequences of this great 
truth ? Notwithstanding Mr. Oliver's anxiety to be 
fair and moderate, he cannot help using strong 
language occasionally, as when he says : " As an ex. 
ample of clalmtle ininactise I know of nothing better 
thao A table ehowiog the probabiUtiee oi A obangQ 
of weather at, or after, each of the moon's stations 
throu,'<hout an entire revolution in her orbit, which 
received the honor of recognition auA approval in an 
a cyclopredia of not very ancient date." He then 
proceeds to demolish this "table" as he had 
demolished the so-called " Herschel's Tables." He 
says, "taking the ten specified points in each luna- 
tion, and calling a lunation roughly thirty days, 
and then averaging the probabilities, we discover 
that this table, which for all the world looks as if 
it might be the condensed result of years of obser- 
vation and much laborious calculation, merely 
expresses (or conceals) the simple fact that, in 
every three days there are three chances to one 
that the weather will undergo a change!--whioh 
in England is only too true ! 
As to another popular saying: "If Christmas 
comes during a waxing moon we shall have a 
very good year ; but if during a waning moon, a 
hard year." Here the agency is again not physical 
(scientifio) but religious." He adds ; " The moon is 
always either waxing or waning ; it is her nature 
to do so. But that of itself signifies nothing : it 
is when Christmas (a religious festival) happens 
upon a waxing or waning period that certain con- 
ditions are to follow ! " He next discusses the popular 
sayings regarding the moon's appearance in the 
sky: whether "lying on her back" or otherwise, 
and points out that in Scotland when the moon 
" lies sair on her back " it is a sure presage of had 
weather (Jamieson), while in England the belief is 
exactly reversed. In this connection he indulges in 
a joke, and says, "the moon might lie sair on her 
back" were it she herself that W6S "bad," but scarcely 
on account of an approaching disturbance of the 
weather ! This attitude, too, he says is a gradual 
one, like the " changes," and ought to exercise its 
influence through all the stages of its progress, 
instead of only when a weather-wise person happens 
to notice it ! I may here add what he omits, namely, 
the conditions under which the crescent moon is 
tilted forward or backward. The sun itself (whose 
shine upon the moon causes us to see more or 
less of her face according to her position) is, of 
course, always on the ecliptic ; but the moon sways 
to 3° on each side of the ecliptic. When, just after 
''new,'' she, too, is on the ecliptic, she necessarily 
must be setting straight over the same place as 
the sun, and be on her back, but when she 
is 5° south or north of the ecliptic, she neces. 
sarily receives the sun's light sideways, and is 
tilted accordingly. It would be easy to make a table of 
these attitudes, if any " use " could be found for them, 
and of course they would be useful "if "they had 
any connection with the ''weather." 
Mr. Oliver next proceeds to discuss one of the most 
wide-spread of all weather beliefs, the " Saturday 
moon," " The notion is that when the new moon 
falls on a Saturday it is invariably followed by a 
period of wet and unsettled weather. This even 
had the support of a Dr. Forster before the Eoyal 
Astronomical Society in 1818, But the Saturday 
moon is not sufficiently periodical. In 1881 not a 
single new moon fell on a Saturday. In 1883 there 
were three, in this year two conjunctions so dis- 
tinguished. What sort of -weather period can we 
imagine guilty of such eccentricities ? So we are obliged 
to include this much respected saying in the 
category of idle superstitions." With this Mr, Oliver 
concludes the class of weather notions he distin- 
guishes as "utterly absurd." With regards to class 
2, or those sayings which have a real physical basis, 
we need not occupy much space, as they scarcely 
belong to the list in popular use. Whether the full 
moon emits " heat rays most of the dark sort " 
which tend to make full-moon nights less cloudy 
hm other aigbt^ {oyeK qI ooures a ^yhole hemigpliece, 
