Page:The Moon (Pickering).djvu/118

82 number fell on the week which contained the new moon, while the least occurred during the week of the fourth quarter. Ellis, in The Observatory, 1902, XXV., page 342, states that earlier observations contradict this generalisation. There is a certain amount of evidence that severe earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are more likely to occur at new and at full moon, when the Sun and Moon pull together, than at other times, when they pull in different directions. The ratio is 51 to 49 per cent. The Moon's influence on the tides has been known from the earliest times.

We thus see that, notwithstanding the number of years that the subject has been studied and the number of different minds that have been at work upon it, in only one case, that of thunderstorms, have we found any satisfactory evidence that the weather is influenced by the Moon. In this case the effect is so slight that it has only a theoretical interest, and we may therefore repeat what has been said by so many others before us, that for all practical purposes the Moon has no influence upon the weather.