WINDS AND WEATHER

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27860, 7 January 1956, Page 5

WINDS AND WEATHER

Man and the Winds. By Aubert de la

Rue. Hutchinson. 196 pp. Sun Sea and Sky. By Irving P. Krick and Roscoe Fleming. Gollancz. 243 pp. Winds drive clouds. dispense moisture, and regulate rainfall distribution. thereby making possible the humidity cycle without which life as we know it would end. Winds also affect the essentially human adjustments. For instance, on the Canterbury plains the pursuit of agriculture is influenced by wind a good deal more than is generally realised.

Mr de la Rue has set himself the task of studying the effect of winds on man. using the world as his backdrop. He defines winds and names a number of local ones before trying to show how men have been influenced by this important element. The development of sailing ships and windmills of different sorts have been the constructive uses; the remaining activities directly associated with wind are in the main purely defensive. A broad study of this nature with its many associations should produce a very interesting and humorous book. Many odd things are in fact recorded such as the Flettner Rotor ship, the adaptions of dwellings and the imaginative responses to wind in mythology and legend. But much that should have been included has been left out —in particular, the Norwegian theories of air mass analysis upon which modern conceptions of winds are now based. The second book is a more scholarly and better executed approach on a broader front. A distinguished meteorologist has combined with a skilled writer to produce a most useful and entertaining book about the weather in our lives. Embracing winds —“the giant which crosses the sky”— and makes the weather, the book covers a wider field than that attempted “by Mr de la Rue. In particular, chapters on weather and war are interesting, as are the ones on rain-making. The presentation throughout the book is first class and makes a mine of important and up-to-date information available to readers. As an example of a general survey of weather in our lives it can be very strongly recommended.