THE GEELONG NATURALIST. b 
ON RAIN. 
By Mm. S. PATTERSON, B.A. 
(Continued. ) 
You will perhaps say Water Power has been made good use 
of in the past; it has driven our mills and manufactories, but 
‘itis a thing of the past; the Power of Water has been suc- 
ceeded by the Power of Steam. Now, I am going to be 
slightly visionary. We are a Science Club, and-it is the 
prerogative of scientific men to be sometimes visionary. I 
will ask you to pause a moment and consider how the world 
is going to get its steam when its coal supplies are worked 
out. England's manufacturing supremacy, we may safely 
say, is due to her large and easily-got-at supply of coal. 
Some of our Geological Members of the Club are accustomed 
to look back through long ages into the world's past. I 
will ask them to look forward, by way of change, though not 
quite so far forward, into the world's future. What will they 
inevitably see in the case of England? Why, at the present 
rate of consumption, I should think a few hundred years 
will work every coal mine in that country right out. What 
will happen then? What isto become of our triumphant 
Age of Steam? Well, -what will happen then, and what 
will happen long before that dire extremity is reached, is this, 
man will revert to the use of Water Power. A commencement 
has been made at this present moment among those go-ahead 
and eminently practical cousins of ours, the Americans. A 
company has been floated, called the “ Niagara Falls Water 
Power Company," to make use of the unlimited supply of 
mechanical energy which is running to waste, hour by hour, 
in those stupendous falls. "The force derived from the falling 
water will be used to drive turbines, which in their turn will 
drive electric dynamos, and thus will be produced an unlimited 
supply of that subtle force electricity. This will be accumu- 
lated in storage cells, ready for use either in propelling trams, 
trains, or steamers, or for lighting or heating purposes, in any 
part of the world. What is being done in America will be 
done elsewhere, and we need not trouble at the thought of 
our coal supplies giving out; for the Age of Steam will be 
succeeded again by Water Power, with electricity as the 
masterful agent, by means of which that force may be distri- 
buted and brought to our very doors. 
. Some scientists consider that clouds consist mainly of 
hollow vesicles of water; others that they consist of minute 
drops. The strongest argument put forward on behalf of the 
