The Sun.
London, England, 1866-04-09 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY EVENING, APRIL 9, 18661

a compound fracture of the left arm through his horse
canoning against Dido at the first fence past the Stand.
The Islington Horse Show.—At the meeting of the
directors of the Agricultural Hall on Tuesday, it was re-
solved to confine the show of hunter stallions to thorough
bred horses.
The Scottish National Hunt Meeting.—The entries for
the Scottish National Hunt Sweepstakes close to Mr. J.
Turner, the clerk of the course, on Thursday next.
Professor Dick, the well-known veterinarian, died in
Edinburgh last Wednesday.
TATTERSITALL.—This meeting will take place on Octo-
ber 31 and following days. The promoters anticipate a
large entry for the stakes, all of which are unlimited. The
dog and bitch puppies stakes close on August 1, and the
two all-aged stakes the night before running. The same
beral additions to the stakes will be made as heretofore.

Weather Prophets.

(From Land and Water.)

We would first say a few words in passing upon that
deep-rooted superstition, which connects the changes of
weather with the phases of the moon. It is curious to
note how strongly this notion still retains its hold upon the
popular mind, though the closest and most careful labours
of scientific observers result in showing, as might have
been reasoned beforehand, that no appreciable connection
of the slightest kind can be traced between them. So firm
and wide-spread a belief can only be paralleled with that
in the power of the stars over the destinies of men, which
till a century ago it was generally thought impiety to
doubt. Nay, the astrologer is not yet extinct among us.
Not only does the " wise woman" still haunt our country
cottages, and our city areas, but in Westminster to this
hour a " wise man of the planets" draws horoscopes for
young ladies, with store of husbands, children, and for-
tunes, at a guinea and upwards a-piece. Now, it is an
odd thing, that no two persons are found to agree as to
what effect the moon is to have at any particular change.
But some effect they all concur in anticipating. One old
gentleman will say, " Ah, sure to be fine to-morrow, the
moon changed this morning." Another will have it,
" Change of moon to-day, look out for rain to-morrow.''
An old lady we know of tells us she has remarked for 50
years that whenever there is a new moon on Saturday after-
noon Sunday is sure to be fine. Some mysterious effect is
assigned by another class of elderly folks to what they call
the moon "being on her back," which is really nothing
more than a regular aspect belonging to our satellite in her
third phase. It never occurs to these good people that if the
moon had really anything to do with the weather, we
should have something very like a monthly weather cycle
as regular as that of the tides. Rain and fine, wind and
calm, would come round in an order following pretty
nearly that of the lunations. Do they never think, again,
that the four divisions of a lunation are simply arbitrary ;

that the moon's apparent changes are always going on
being, in fact, nothing more than what is due to a circular
convex reflector, showing more or less of luminous area, as
the sun lights it up in its revolutions ? Moreover, there
exists but one moon for the whole earth ; her changes con-
sequently should be felt equally in turn by every spot in
succession over which her spell is cast in her daily circuit of
our globe. For it cannot be supposed that so potent a
luminary exists for the special and exclusive behoof of the
British Isles.
Even in our own climate nothing is more common than to
have the same run of weather—rain, drought, frost, or what
not—for say a couple of months, the moon overhead waxing
and waning like clockwork at the time. To pretend, then,
any connexion by way of cause and effect between the two
is, in plain language, moonshine. Some faint relation of the
kind is, indeed, to be traced in theory. The air around us,
being a ponderable fluid, is, of course, worked upon like the
ocean, by the joint action of sun and moon. There must
then be diurnal tides in the atmosphere analogous to those
we behold in the water, varying in rise and fall, and conse-
quent pressure, in proportion to the respective density of
the two fluids. But then there is this mighty difference. We
are at the surface of the ocean of water. We are at the
bottom of the ocean of air. Could the surface of our aerial
envelope, probably 50 or 60 miles above our heads, be made
in any way visible to us, we should, no doubt, perceive a
daily rise and fall of prodigious extent, in addition to gigan-
tic billows and displacements due to the action of storms.
But to what extent are these likely to bo felt at the lower
depths of the atmospheric ocean? Of what fluctuation in
their tremendous pressure, or what other hydrostatic
changes can we suppose the diatoms or star-fish to be sen-
sible, who are found to drag on a dark submarine exist-
ence, five or six miles below the daylight ? It is true that
observations of extreme delicacy have. been thought to
prove that such a minute diurnal tide can be detected in
our atmosphere. But as we have intimated before,
such a fact, so far from contributing in any way towards
explaining the changes of weather, would but introduce
an additional difficulty. If it had any effect at all, it
would tend to equalise rather than to vary the phenomena.
There remains one particular, in which an influence of a
more positive kind has been attributed to the moon. This
relates not to its mass, but to its actinic powers. It has been
constantly observed, and Sir John Herschel has given the
weight of his authority to the fact that the sky at the period
of full moon is more than usually clear from the clouds
and mists. It would seem that radiation from the lunar
disc had the effect of dispersing watery vapours: But
no sensible amount of heat is found to reach us, whether
Luna displays the whole or the most modest portion of her
charms. In the tropics we know that the power of her
rays is more strongly felt. Blindness and madness are the
frequent effect of exposure to them; meat and vegetables
putrefy. But we are as far off as ever from being able to
incorporate this mysterious and little-known phenomenon
with the general laws of meteorology. At all events there
is nothing here to serve the turn of our weather prophets.
Nor, in point of fact, do these gentlemen even pretend to
base their supposed calculations upon any large philosophi-
cal views of cosmical phenomena at all. Their horizon is
limited, as we shall presently see, in petty detail to our
own small insulated portion of the globe ; and their
method, such as it is, may be described as purely em-
pirical, not making even the slightest approach towards
connecting together cause and effect. From the way in
which they talk we might suppose that the code of weather
management for the entire earth was drawn up for the ex-
clusive benefit of the British Isles. Instead of being a mere
speck on the globe—standing, in point of longitude, on the
confines of almost a hemisphere of land and a hemisphere of
water, and, in point of latitude, exposed to the alternate
buffetings of polar and equatorial currents—it might be
thought that Britannia held the point of central import-
ance in the office of the clerk of the weather, and that her
interests governed the winds and rains as her trident has
been mythically supposed to rule the waves.

The Englsh Press on the Queen's Letter to
Mr. Peabody.

The Lim:pool Post regrets that, although charity
is the noblest of the virtues, occasions are so rife
for its exercise that even when ostentatious, it has its
use ; but when it is so thoroughly pure and dis-
interested that no honours which the Sovereign has
it in her power to bestow on the donor—at once a
foreigner and a cosmopolitan—when he repudiates
alike a baronetcy, the Graud Cross of the Bath,
and hardly deigns to accept as an acknowledg-
ment of his philanthropy a miniature portrait of the
excellent lady who fills the throne of Britain—the
question arises whether Mr. Peabody in handing
over to trustees a quarter of a million of money to
to be invested in improved dwellings for the hum-
bler classes is not a gigantic satirist, setting an
example which the Queen, the nobility, and all our
affluent classes cannot afford to follow. Is it not
possible that this large-hearted American, con-
stantly engaged in the contemplation of the misery
and destitution which pervade the richest city on
the globe, meant something more than parting with
£250,000 than providing healthy homes for some
hundreds of poor people—intended, in short, to
convey his abiding impression that an indifference
to the condition of the poor is one of the character-
istics of an aristocratic country? Our Liverpool
contemporary does not say that the noble gift
should not have been accepted ; but it does say
that, unless it be followed up by many supple-
mentary acts on the part of the titled and wealthy
in England, it will remain a permanent memento
that while we are the richest and the poorest peo-
ple on the face of creation, the indifference of one
class to the condition of the other compelled a
Yankee to enter against the system this costly and
significant form of protest.
The Morning Star says the Queen's letter to Mr.
Peabody is a reality, and will be accepted as such.
It speaks exactly the feelings which were in the
heart of the Royal writer. It expresses the thanks
alike of the first lady and the chief magistrate of
the land ; the representative of English womanhood
and of English nationality. It may be taken. as
written ou behalf and in the name of England.
It will be regarded in America as a touching and a
trusty evidence of the feeling of brotherhood which,
after all the hard words that foolish or designing
people have said on either side of the ocean, does
still subsist between Great Britain and the United
States. Mr. Peabody will return to his own coun-
try an ambassador of good-will, bearing his kindly
credentials from the Sovereign of the nation he has
benefited so much. He will tell his people there
that in all the ranks of society, from the English
throne to the English cottage, there are now few in-
deed—there never were numerically many— who en-
tertain aught but genial, fraternal feeling towards the
great American nation. The gift he has given is,
indeed, of great material value to us--perhaps we