Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/511

Rh Nearly all countries have had their almanacs, but they were particularly popular in Germany and England. In America, probably, the almanac which has been more widely read and its weather forecasts more generally credited than any other, is the Hagerstown Almanac, which has been published regularly every year since 1794. Yet the weather predictions appearing in it were based entirely upon the time of day the moon entered into any one of her four quarters. For instance, if this happened between midnight and 2 it indicated fair weather in summer, and fair with hard frost in winter, unless the wind be south or southwest. While, on the other hand, if this change occurred between noon and 2 p.m., it indicated very rainy weather in summer, and rain or snow in winter. And so a table, claimed to be constructed on a due consideration of the attraction of the sun and moon in their several positions respecting the earth, was prepared for all the hours, and thus was weather forecasting simplified and made easy.

The full moon has usually been associated with clear, cold weather. This is probably because we notice the full moon so much more when the weather is clear, and also clear nights are cooler on account of more rapid radiation of the earth's heat than when blanketed with clouds. Also since the moon's path on the heavens is so near the ecliptic, and full moons are always 180 degrees from the sun, they are far north in winter, and thus longer above the horizon in the northern hemisphere than they are in summer, and thus we associate full moons with our long, cold, winter nights.

So much for the moon as a weather forecaster. Let us take a look into the planetary theories.

Along with astronomy, which had its beginning away back in history among the Chaldæans, the Chinese and the Egyptians, there grew up the art of astrology. Egypt was a particularly rich field for this art. Astrologers not only professed to tell the future weather and the seasonal conditions from the relative positions of the planets, and the sun, moon and constellations in the heavens, but could foretell the results of all human endeavors and desires. They could read the future of the individual and the state. Astrological predictions, however, could not stand the light of education and modern scientific knowledge, and we could hardly say that in the twentieth century, in educated countries, they have any credence whatever. Yet the predictions of our day so-called long-range forecasters, based upon their planetary theories, have as little foundation in demonstrated facts as did those of the astrologers.

Among the most famous astrologers, outside of Egypt and the Orient, was one Dr. Thurmeisen, a man of truly great genius, who resided during the eighteenth century at the electorial court of Berlin.