FLOODS AND THE COMET.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 77, 2 April 1910, Page 13

FLOODS AND THE COMET.

The Tiber has been rising steadily for several days (reports a Centra? News cablegram dated Ist February), and has now reached an extraordinary height, with the result that all the low-lying country about Rome is under water. The Goveramant and the municipal authorities are taking steps to protect the residents in the most exposed districts. It is feared that if the floods increase, the work of preparation for next, year's great exhibition will be hampered and that the fixture will ba,v e to be postponed for a year. -' The-re are thousands of superstitious Italians who attribute this and tbe disasters wrought hy tbe recent storm to the evil influence- of the new comet. Some of the ne\r3pap,ers have pubKshed "a calculation" to the effect that the "dayiight comet" must have been visible from the earth at tie time of the deJage, from which the credulous; contadini ar.gue that a new worldwide inundation, i»ust be impending. In this belief they have been strengthened by the news from Paris and by the announcement from Venice that the seaafter temporarily receding, has risen to an TinnsHJrl height, covering several islands in the lagoon and invading the: "Piazza San Marco.