CHEERFUL PROSPECTS,

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3371, 23 January 1884, Page 2

CHEERFUL PROSPECTS,

In connection with the present unseasonable weather, a correspondent furnishes us with an interesting extract. ADr R. T. Trail wrote to the “ Philadelphia Star” in 1876 as follows:—“We shall not have to wait long for the expected pestilence, for we are approaching a very pestilential period. Jupiter, one thousand times as large as the earth, revolves round the sun every 12 years; Saturn, once in about 30 years ; Uranus once in about 164 years. The perihelion of all these planets does not occur at the same time for thousands of years. In the sixth century, and again in the sixteenth century, the first three were coincidently in perihelion; and these were the most pestilential periods in the Christian era. The perihelion periods of Jnpiter and Saturn coincide with the extensive prevalence of plague, cholera, and other epidemics. But in future, from even now to 1885, we are to have what has not occurred for eighteen hundred years, viz., the nearest approach to the sun of all four planets coincidentally. The obvious deduction from this fact and theory is that the earth’s temperature and the changed condition of its atmosphere consequent on the interference with or the obstruction of the usual amount of light and heat will be increasingly unfavorable to life and health on our globe from this present time to 1880, and from 1880 to 1885 the adverse influence will be the greatest after that they will gradually diminish. Dr Knapp has shown in a historical paper to the New York “ Medical Journal” that all wide-spread pestilences for 300 years past have occurred with the perihelia, or nearing of the large planets. At former periods it has been noticed that the near approach of one or more of the larger planets of the solar system occasioned disturbance in the atmosphere, causing great heat and cold, droughts and rains, blights on the crops and fruits, and epidemics among human beings, and epizotics among animals.”