Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/140

 climate, too, can perhaps only be obviated in a very small measure, though the science of meteorology, constantly being helped by facilities for better observation-reporting, will unquestionably help the agriculturist by giving him timely warnings. It seems hardly possible to doubt that the eccentricities of climate and the unexpected shifting of the rainy season in Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese war must have been caused by the vast atmospheric disturbances created by days and weeks of cannonading: and of course it is an old theory that heavy gun-fire "brings down the rain." Military historians say that the number of wet-day battles altogether exceeds any expectation which could have been formed without allowing for effects of this sort. When science has pondered upon the subject, and instituted in an ordered manner experiments of a kind hitherto never taken very seriously, it may very well be that some means less violent than the detonation of explosives may be discovered by the practical meteorologist for creating disturbances in the atmosphere; and while it may not be possible to prevent excessive rainfall at inconvenient times, it seems easy to conceive that when there is moisture in the atmosphere we may be able to bring it down as rain. Of course this is a very different thing from breaking up droughts: and artificial rain-making cannot in