THEORIES OF RAINFALL

Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette, 23 August 1911, Page 7

THEORIES OF RAINFALL

Adducing instances to show how uniformity prevails throughout the cosmos, Chlambers, in "Vestiges of Creation," remarks incidentally that in any given place the aggregate rainfall for every ten years is the same. But scientists like doctors, are prone to differ, and more recent pronouncements of meteorologists seem to afford a complete refutation of the theory. Statistics show that throughout Europe, though there have been dry as well

as abnormally wet seasons, there is a steady increase in the rainfall. Since 1689 records have been kept at Paris. Until the end of the :;ghteenth century no group of years showed an average as high as 2oin. But since 1806 the average has exceeded this figure invariably, and for the seventeen years, 1893-1909, it was actually 23 inches. Another theory, with which the whole of the foregoing seems inconsistent, is that the water of the earth is becoming gradually decomposed, and that in the moon we may see what the earth is coming to—a planet without moisture, and hence without fife. Herr Kernbaum, a German savant, declares that water is decomposed by radium or the ul-tra-violet rays of light, and that the hydrogen so formed rises to the upper regions of the atmosphere, never to unite With oxygen and return to the earth* surface.