Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 79, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 December 1916 — THE WAR AM) THE WEATHER [ARTICLE]

THE WAR AM) THE WEATHER

In Indiana the liquor interest forced a wet plank into tlie platform in spite of the protests of Democratic leaders, and then, after having disgraced the party by their insolent domination of it, they : proceeded to throw their support to the Republican party. Indiana went Republican on President, senators, congressmen and state ticket. The Democrats of the nation may well profit by the lesson taught in Indiana. The liquor interests have no politics; they use the party that best serves their purpose, and they cast it aside when through with' it. They THOUGHTHughes would win. W. J. BRYAN.

Every time von puff your cigaret yon liberate 4,090,000,000,000 nuclei per cubic centimeter of smoke. Factory chimneys and steamboat funnels do the same thing. Each of these nuclei may form the foundation of a rain-drop. But they don’t all do it. If they did, we would never have a sunny day, and Europe would have been drowned long ago. But there does seem to be some connection between storms and the ro r and smoke of battlefields. For, ever since the: war began, the rain-f-’R in the battle zones, and even in districts far removed, has been abnormal. Perhaps the cannonading is so much like thunder that showers just naturally follow. J B. W. Gardiner, who lias studied the weather for many ' years doesn’t take much stock in the theory. ~ Every rain-drop, he explains in the Atlantic Monthly, is built around a nucleus, or center of condensation, and if ever there is artificial rain it will he through the increasing number of , nuclei. “Sometimes nature conducts a rain-making experiment in very dramatic fashion, as when a volcano blows its head off. When Mont Peine was •in eruption, there •was produced the heavy rolling clouds, the lightning, the windTush, and the down-pour. Even at a, distance eruptions cause rain.’’ Rut this, he says, does not prove ihe theory, for atmospheric conditions vary s 0 largely. “For example, during one of the recent eruptions of Asama Yama, pressure disturbances were recorded on all the barographs in Japan; but the daily noon gun fired close to the observatory in Tokio never affects the instruments. The idea that concussion alone produces rain, then, may be dismissed, as there is no removal or transportation of either water-vapor or nuclei by these compressions! waves.’’