Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 October 1891 — ABOUT RAIN-MAKING. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

ABOUT RAIN-MAKING.

The Scientific American Indulges in a little Sarcastic Joke let. In a recent issue the Scientific American drops into humor. The artificial production of rain has given it an opportunity to crack a Joke in a pictorial way which is worthy the best efforts of Puck or Judge. The subject of this self-evident sketch is a certain Mr. Daniel Buggies, of Fredericksburg, Va., who secured a patent some eleven years ago on a rainmaking machine, and the Scientific American warns Senator Farwell and his fellow moisture precipitators that they are infringing on Mr. Daniel Buggies’ patent. “Our engraving,” says the Scientific American, “represents an individual in the act of bringing down the rain.”

The editor betrays more faith in Mr. Buggies’ rain-maker than the artist shows, for he has furnished the “individual” with a silk til,e and refused him the charity of an umbrella. Eegarding Senator Farwell’s efforts the Scientific American says: “To us the most practical result likely to follow from these experiments is the extraction of money from the public treasury. We have seen bow easy it was to obtain the first SIO,OOO to aid the chimera. “ ‘I asked them to put in the rain appropriation just as an accommodation to me,’ says the Senator, ‘and they did it. Nobody in the House cared to see what No. 17, a little appropriation anyhow, was, and it passed.’ “The idea that rain can be precipitated by cannon-firing is almost as old as gunpowder; but while there are many curious coincidences there is no satisfactory evidence that rain was so produced. It is on a par with the Chinese mode of conquering the enemy by making a loud noise. “It is true a downpour often follows a clap of thunder; but this does not prove the rain was produced by the concussion. On the contrary, we know that rain probably results from the cooling of moisture-laden air, and simultaneously electricity may appear. Hence in thunderstorms the aerial concussions are most probably the results, not the cause, of rain formation. “Nature works on a vast scale in producing rain; and it is idle to suppose that the burning of a little explosive matter can materially affect the boundless atmosphere of the skies. “In a certain sense it may be claimed that rain always follows an explosion, since all atmospheric changes are successive. If to-day is fair, fire a gun and it will rain either to-morrow or some following day. If to-day is rainy, fire a gun and it will be fair either to-morrow or afterward. There appears to be just as much sense in appropriating public money for explosives to produce dryness in Alaska as to make rain by similar„means in Texas.”

PRECIPITATING RAIN BY EXPLOSIVES.