Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 67.djvu/514

508 the 25th, 26th and 27th; much colder from the west and north, lasting up to the 30th and 31st.

These predictions can hardly be said to be less absurd or to possess more value than those given in Dr. Moore's almanac for the month of January one hundred and ten years before. This statement is made without regard as to whether or not any of the storms passing across the United States during January, 1904, happened to agree in time in some part of the country with the storm periods mentioned in the 'Word and Works' forecast. During any month of January, from five to ten storm areas of from two to four or five days' duration pass across or over some part of the United States, and it would be strange indeed if some of these storms somewhere did not agree with the 'longrange' forecast periods.

Professor C. M. Woodward, of Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., has given a clear and most excellent review of the so-called planetary influence theory, in an article published in Ware's Valley Monthly, December, 1875. The article is entitled 'An Examination of Mr. Tice's Theory of the Planetary Equinoxes,' and was published very soon after the appearance of that wonder book, Tice's 'Elements of Meteorology.' Professor Woodward practically concluded that Mr. Tice 'built a house of straw upon the sand, and his theories fell under the first blow.' As Mr. Tice's disciples are still with us working upon the credulity of the people, and as Professor Woodward's article is probably not now generally available, I will attempt briefly an explanation of this fantastic theory, drawing freely upon the work and words of Professor Woodward.

For the past seventy-five years or more the scientific world has been busy observing, collecting and tabulating all sorts of natural phenomena—astronomical, physical and meteorological—in the attempt to discover cycles, or regular recurring periods. Thus it was found that the sun spots show a period of 11.11 years between two successive times of maximum frequency; also that this period holds good for extra magnetic disturbances of storms. Further, that the times of maximum and minimum sun spot frequency fairly agrees with the times of maximum and minimum magnetic disturbance, and also that the years in which the sun spots were the most frequent, and the earth most electrically excited, were years as well in which hurricanes were the most terrible and most numerous in the East and West Indies. These striking coincidences set men to thinking, and the scientists—and some, unfortunately, not so scientific—to hunting for a possible cause.