676 ) 
[November, 
ANALYSES OF BOOKS. 
Can Man affect the Weather, or the Vapour Year. No author’s 
name. Publisher (apparently) McLeod, 67, Port Street, 
Stirling. 
“ May it please your Majesty, I doubt the faCt.” In other words, 
before falling to work with Mr. Ruskin and with our author to 
seek out causes, either physical or moral, for the deterioration of 
the weather, let us be certain that such deterioration really exists. 
If believers in a change for the worse would only search old 
records, they would read of vapour years and of cold drizzly 
summers fully as bad as any which have occurred within the 
memory of the present generation. Let them, to go no further, 
read over White’s “ Natural History of Selborne.” Or, if dis- 
posed to go a little further afield, let them peruse in “ Ciel et 
Terre ” an account of the fogs which prevailed over a great part 
of Europe during June and July, 1783. On the contrary, what 
do they say to the year which is now drawing towards its close ? 
Can they find many instances of a milder winter, or of a hotter, 
drier summer ? of more cloudless skies, and of a greater absence 
of fog ? Again, in 1883, which if we mistake not is the author’s 
“ vapour year,” the east of Europe enjoyed a brilliant and pro- 
ductive summer, whilst in Mauritius and Reunion we learn that 
the purity of the atmosphere was so complete that the satellites 
of Jupiter were visible with the naked eye. 
Let not our anonymous friend misapprehend us ; we are not 
pleading the cause of smoke. On the contrary, we hate it with 
a perfect hatred ; but we do not wish that it should be wrong- 
fully censured. 
Turning to the pamphlet before us we find a very strange 
proposal. The author appeals to manufacturers to “ cease their 
factories for one week only, and see if such benefits will not 
accrue in our atmosphere as to lead you to exercise your self- 
denial for three weeks longer in order to restore our sun to the 
earth, by which time you will see such effects as will abundantly 
reward you. . . . You will behold the face of Nature revivifying, 
you will be released from the burden of the poor ! ” 
The author seems to forget that the owners of factories are 
not the only consumers of coal and makers of smoke. Probably 
one-half of our annual yield is burnt by railway companies, 
steam-ship owners, and by the British householder. Hence a 
mere stoppage of the mills, as was effected by a mob in the so- 
called “ Holy Month in 1842 (or 1843 ?) would be but a very 
