TO BRING DOWN RAIN.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIIC, Issue 14337, 1 November 1910, Page 4

TO BRING DOWN RAIN.

We do not know how far our correspondent is serious in his suggestion that we should open a subscription list in order that attempts may be made to bring down rain with explosives. Rain is undoubtedly badly needed all over Canterbury, and if it does not fall within the next few days farmers will be faced with a serious prospect. Judging from the results of previous experiments of this kind, however, we do not think it probable that nature's operations would be hastened or assisted by the means advocated by our correspondent. The rainmaking experiments which were held some years ago, in a time of drouth, at Oamaru, convinced most people of the hopelessness of these attempts. The present Government Meteorologist, the Rev. D. C. Bates, supervised those experiments, though we believe he was never hopeful of their success, and his scepticism was justified by their failure. Previous to this attempt, the confident claims of an Australian "rain-maker" that he could bring down healing showers were tested by experiments of several weeks' duration at Broken Hill, but nothing fell except the briefly-vaunted reputation of the conjurer, who sought fresh woods and pastures new when the farmers realised the disappointment of their desperate hopes. He who makes the rain to fall, we are told, on ihe just as well as on the unjust, cannot be induced by any such frivolous devices to make it fall before its time. In Christchurch prayers for rain have been offered lately in the churches. This is a practice of which many religious people only doubtfully approve, as thinking that it is too much to expect the divine order to be disturbed for the temporary wellbeing of a few. There is a story of a Royal Duke, one of Queen Victoria's grand-relatives, who had a quite_ unconscious habit of making original responses during the progress of the church service. To the minister's "Let us_ pray," he would respond "Yes, certainly," and when the prayers for rain were given out he would be overheard to remark "No good, with the wind in the south-east." Notwithstanding the reservation thus implied, we think that this Royal Duke, were he alive to-day, might have more faith in the Christchurch method of securing rain than in the method advocated by our correspondent.