THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
[September i, 1891 . 
212 
oorreot, as applied to ua, the Secretary replied : 
‘ If 1 could tell how to cast the weather for every 
Bubdiviaion of the kingdom 1 fhould bo very clever, 
as, of course, the olimotea vaiy in different dis- 
triots from loonl enuaea.’ As ijon sir, eay [<• «•, 
R. A. Prootor], ' these daily forccaata are not to be 
depended upon, and are apparently only a matter 
of guosa work, and ao had better be dropped, aa, 
for reference and utility, they are proved to bo 
utterly wotthleas.’ ” To this another writer (p®P' 
tain Noble, a leading natronomer of our day), adds : 
“ If wo are hatiali^ with the return which the 
British nation reoeivoa for tlio annual eum^ of 
ills, 000 expended on ao called ‘ Meteorology, wo 
must— like the Sootohman in the pnmblo,— bo vera 
thankfu' for ama' mairoioa.” The Sooiety’a foreoaata 
were deduced from daily telegraphic reporta 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 inatruot the public on thia 
abiding superstition. Such a paper has only juat 
fallen into my hands, though published, I believe, a 
year or two ago. It ia written by Mr. John Westwood 
Oliver, who deals with the subject in all its bearings 
in a true spirit of aoienoe, seeking not only to des- 
troy error, but, wherever possible, to uphold truth 
as found in popular aayinga. For thia purpose he 
divides his arguments into : “ (1) Lunar notions 
tliat are utterly absurd j and ( 2 ) those that are 
explioablo by the aid of physical principles, and are 
therefore rational and useful in praotice.” I shall 
soaroely do more, in this short paper, than sum- 
marize these ‘‘notions,” adding the cream of his 
remarks, and a few obsorvations of my own. To 
merely enumerate all the popu’ar sayings regarding 
the “moon,” would rtijuire 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 ate of the nsture of predictions, 
otherwise of what use are they ? Suoh as ate to be 
found in ‘‘Ilerschel's Weather Tables.” 
J. W. Oliver says : •• To the first class belongs the 
idea, in its various forms, of a direct lunar in- 
fluence. The weather will be such and such, not 
booause the moon's retleotion of light ia greater or 
smaller, not beoause her radiation of heat is more 
tor less, nor because her position with respect to the 
earth is neater or farther away, but simply beoause 
she ‘ ohangea ’ between certain arbitrary _ h^oure. 
Upon this Mr. Oliver remarks: " The lunar influence 
assumed here must be of an occult nature, as 
there is 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 ‘ oiianging ’ every instant of time from 
new to 'full, aod from lull to new again, the 
■ quarters' being only stages in the process spe- 
cially marked for tho sake of oonvenionoe. But 
wo are asked to believe that only these conven- 
tional ‘ changes ’ rule tho weather. ” To thia ho 
adds ■ ‘‘ Need the British public he assured that no 
such ' convenient orderliness in weather pheno- 
mena exists, and that tho ‘ changes of the moon 
ore not confined to England, not 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 tho consequencea of this great 
truth ? Notwithstanding Mr. Olivet’s anxiety to be 
lair and moderate, he cannot help using strong 
language ooeasionally, as when he says ; ‘‘ As an ex- 
ample of clalurato iiunsc/ise I know of notbiug better 
than a table showing the probabilitieB of a change 
of weather at, or after, eaoli of the moon’s stations 
throughout an entire revolution in her orbit, which 
received the honor of recognition and approv.al in an 
a oyolopiodia of not very ancient date.” lie then 
prooeeds to demolish this “table” as ho had 
demolished tho so-oalled “ Uersohal’s Tables.” lie 
says, “taking the ten specified points in eaoh 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 tho condensed result of years of obser- 
vation and much laborious oaloulation, merely 
expresses (or oonoeals) tho simple fact that, in 
every three days there are three ohanoos to one 
that the weather will undergo a change!- which 
in England is only too true ! 
Aa to another popular saying: “If Christmas 
comes during a waxing moon we shall have a 
very good year ; but if daring a waning moon, a 
hard year.” Here the agency is again not physical 
(scientific) but religious.” Ha 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 baeit ” or otherwise, 
and points out that in Rootland when tho moon 
lies sair on her baok ” it is a sure presage of bad 
weather (Jamieson), while in England the belief is 
exactly reversed. In this oonneotion be indulges in 
a ]oke, and says, “ the moon might lie sair on her 
back” were it she herself that was “bad,” but soaroely 
on account of an approaching disturbanoe of the 
weather I This attitude, too, he says ia a gradual 
one, like the “ ohangoe,” and ought to exercise its 
inUuenoe through all tho stages of its progress, 
instead of only when a weather-wise person happens 
to notice it I I may here add what he omits, namely, 
the oonditions under which the orescent moon is 
tilted forward or baokward. The sun itself (whosd 
shine upon the moon causes ua to see more or 
loss of her face according to hor position) is, of 
course, always on the ooliptio ; but the moon sways 
to 6 ° on each side of the eciiptie. When, just after 
new,” she, too, is on the eeliptio, she ueoesaarily 
must be setting straight over the same place aa 
the sun, and be on her back, but when she 
is 6 ° south or north of the eoliptio, she neoes- 
sarilv receives the sun’s light sideways, and ia 
tilted aooordingly . 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 prooeeds to diaouas one of the most 
wide-spread of all weather beliefs, the “ Saturday 
moon, ' “ The notion is that when the new moon 
fallp on a Saturday it is invariably followed by a 
period of wet and nnsettlod weather. This oven 
had the support of a Dr. Forster before tho Royal 
Astronomical Society in 1818. But the Saturday 
moon is not suffioiently periodical. In 1881 not a 
single new moon fell on a Saturday. In 1883 there 
were three, in thia year two ooujunotiona ao dis- 
tinguished. What sort of weather period can wo 
imagine guilty of such eooentrioities ? So we are obliged 
to include this much respected saying in the 
category of idle superstitions.’’ With thia Mr. Olivet 
concludes the class of weather notions he distin- 
guishes as “utterly absurd.” With regards to olasa 
2 , or those sayings which have a real physioal basis, 
we need not occupy much apace, as they soaroely 
belong to the list in ijopular use. Whether the full 
moon emits " heat rays most of the dark sort " 
which tend to make full-moon nights less cloudy 
han Other sights (over of course a whole hemisphere. 
