The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-11-03
DEPEND UPON VULCAN.
CRANks WHO WANT TO run THE
WEATHER BUREAU By MOON
AND STARS.
Cau Themselves PIanetarians-I3e-
Iieve They Know More Than the
Expert About Making Forecasts.
Many Believers in Their Theory.


From the Pittzburg Dispatch.
Washington, Oct 27.-Cranks want TO
run Uncle Sans weather bureau. They
call themselves planetarians, and their no
ton is that all meteorological phenomena
on the earth are controlled by the moon
and the planets. They are not satisfied
with the forecasts made by government
experts. and they are anxious to procure
the substitution Of a system by which Il
is practicable, they say, to predict with
accuracy, storms. floods, droughts. tor
nadoes, frosts, etc, a twelvemonth in ad-
vance. or even 100 years ahead. These
people are not victims of a rare form Of
lunaey The delusion has numerous be-
levers. Virgins is one of their prophets
Another is the Rev Mr.. Hicks of St
Louis, who publishes a periodical in the
interest Of planetarianism.
The great hold of the planetarians is
the planet Vulcan" said Prof II. A.
Hazen of the weather bureau yesterday.
This planet is not known to astronomi-
cal science. but that makes no difference.
1t Is supposed to have been discovered by
a Frenchman named LescarbauIt in 1855.
Lescarbault was shoemaker doing bus
mess in suburb of Paris. He had a
a
telescope His observations he recorded
on blackboard in his shop. One day he
had his telescope turned upon the sun.
when he saw peculiar looking spot on
It's face. The spot did not look like an
ordinary sun-spot. and, as he gazed, it
sid slowly across the solor orb and van
lshed. Lescarbault made a note of the
phenomenon and the time of the dav
WITH q piece of chalk; then he put a notice
OF II into the newspapers
- me great astronomer Leverier saw
sne notce, ana, being interested dropped
IN at the shoemaker shop. He inspect
ca the notes on the blackboard, COMPARED
Watches with the proprietor and from
these data figured out the orbit of me
supposed planet Vulcan, and his comDu-
tauon showed that it was very close in
qeed to the solar ceter-in fact, only
l,VI,oV miles or SO distant from it, The
nearest 10 the sun Of all the recognized
planets Is Mercury, you know, when
IS 2O,OOOCO0 miles away.
II may seem surprising that Lever
rier was so ready to accent the shoe
makers observations. This is accounted
Tor by the fact that the famous astron-
oiner was looking for a planet in Just
ABOUT that neighbOrhoOd. He had noticed
certain perturnaUOus in the motions of
Mercury which seemed to indicate the
presence of a celestial body some where in
Its neighborhood. Porro and Wolf, at
zurich, thought in 1876 that they spied
ulcan making transit across the sun;
ever seen II. Being so near, it would
cross the suns face once in every few
days. Astronomers all over the world
are watching the sun every day, and, if
Vulcan really exists, it is most surpris-
ing that 1t should have escaped notice
However, the alleged planet is just
what the planetarans require in their
business. 1t serves to account for almost
anything in the way of weather They
say that it goes around the sun once in
seven days, and 1t is an old and familiar
weather X
~ periods. You have heard it said that
II II rains on the first Sunday in a month
IN that month. on one, occasion some
years ago there was a terrible storm in
Missouri Prof; Tice, planetarian, de-
clared that Vulcan was accountable for
it. He took Leverrier's computations and
hgured II out that on the day of the
storm Vulcan must have been on the
face of the sun. Proctor, the astronomer,
took the matter up and made recompu-
tauon, proving that Tice had omitted one
important consideration, which, taking his
own theory, would have fetched Vulcan
sun and behind the solar orb.
But It takes more than little thing
like that to disturb the confidence of a
planetarian. Hicks of St. Louis has a
rival named Mansll in Rock Island, Ill
The former figures it out that coniunctfons
Of planets have to do with bad weather,
While the latter considers that the equin-
oXes are responsible L;oth publish fore
casts regularly. When one says that it
VIII rain the other predicts clear skies,
and vice versa. Probably they come out
even in the long run as to accuracy. AS
Tor Vulcan, supposing that it exists at
an, II must be very small body. 1t is
never less than S6,000C09 miles from u.s.
and how is it to be supposed reasonably
that it could affect the earth? When it is
IN transit the sun, a glowing mass 100000
miles in diameter, is just back of it, and
would utterly oVerwhelm the trifling in
huence that it might exert. Venus, pre-
sumably, would be much more likely than
vulcan to affect the earth.
THE so-caled Luna theorists are
branch of the planetarians. They be-
neVe that the moon has everything to do
with meteorological phenomena on the
earth. They call attention to the fact
that the tide in the Bay of Fundy rises
and falls sixty feet. If the moon is thus
able 10 lit substance as heavy as water
IT ought to produce tide in the atmos-
phere 500 times as deep, because water is
SEQ times as heavy as air. When a plane
taflan said that to me one day l put a
question to him in return. / asked him if
he could tell me how much the water is
raised by the moon in the middle of the
Paci1c ocean. He replied that he did not
know and told him one foot He laughed
What nonsense, he said. What way could
there be of telling how much the water
rises in the middle of the Pacific2' / an
swered; "A very easy way. Simply bv
measuring the tides on coral islands
The tides of the Bay of Fundy are
that comes up the Atlantic coast Ii
sometimes happens that an inexperienced
skipper VIII anchor there at night in fifty
feet Of water, only to find himself next
morning on land high and dry. The wealth.
er bureau has made careful observations
of the. tides in the atmosphere. We find
that they are so slight as to make a dir
ference in the barometer of only two or
three thousandths of an inch-a difference
inappreciable. The belief that there Is,
apt to be less rain at the time of the full
moon is widespread all over the world
On this account fairs and festivals par
tcularly in Germany and France, are al
most always held when the moon is full.
This notion seems to have a small basis
in fact. Observations along the Atlantic
coast of the United States show that there
is less rain when the moon is fun than al
the time of the sickle moon. On the other
hand, observations on the Pacific coast
seem to prove exactly the opposite. The
fun moon appears to have some effect in
dispensing clouds, as you may notice per-
haps the next time you see her perfect
disk rise on cloudy night. On the whole,
/ think that the influence of the moon
upon the weather is very slight, though
faith in it has been entertained in all
heather well as Christian lands
The almanacs use the so-called lunar :
tables of HerscheH, which pretend to
show relations between the weather and
phases of the moon. These tables are al
legged to have been computed and arranged
by the celebrated astronomer They are