Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1900-01-25
CLIMATE SHOWS FEW CHANGES
Weather Conditions Now About the
 Same as in Ages Past.


 From Popular Science: This subject is of extreme. interest and merits g most thorough study. We find the early and the "latter9 rain today in Palestine precisely as described $500 years ago. Jordan overfows all it's banks, in February today exactly as it did in Joshaas time, thirty-three cen tufies ago. Plants taken from mummy cases in Egypt, which must have been
 gathered more than 5000 years since,
 are practically of the same size and
 have the same appearance as those
 growing today. Records of vintages in France over TOO years ago show prac-
 tical1y the same dates as today. Actual
 observations of rainfall for over 200 years in France show no change. Ob
 seryations of temperature for almost
 200 years at St. Petersburg show no
 change appreciable to us, though, of course, the earliest observations were extremely crude and somewhat unreli- able. Facts of this kind might be ad-
 dueej to fill small volume. On the
 other hand, we have records of most extraordinary cold weather in ancient time. One winter light wine in France
 froze. Another winter the River Pc iroze oyer so as to bear teams, an un-
 heard-of phenomenon today. Tn this journal for June it is stated that ssPar- nassus and Socrate, now free from snow, were covered with 1t in classic antiquity. Also "the name Greenland,
 which strikes us as so singularly in- appropriate, was not inapplieable at the time it was named, in the four teenth century" It is entirely proba- b1e that descriptions of the cold in an- cient times were much exaggerated. Parnassus and Soerate have snow at times. and, in earlier days, when pro- lection against the cold and snow was much less than now, a little snow would go a long way. The earlier voyagers from Iceland, more than a thousand years ago, leaving land of almost perpetual ice and snow, and reaching a land in summer with it's beautiful green color to their unac- eustomed eyes, would very naturally give the name of Greenland to 1t. At the summer time it is said that Green land presents most beautiful green near the Danish settlements to this day. Our oldest inhabitants, who have been wont to describe the terri ble cold and deep snows of their boy hood days as ineomparablv greater than anything which does or can oc- cur today, have completely lost their the last winter when reading of ship that had sunk in New York harbor ty the weight of the ice upon it; also that Washington had had thir- ty-four inches of snow on level and the lowest temperature ever noted in that fair city. I am sure a careful study will show no appreciable change in the climate of this earth since the early historic times. Of course nothing here adduced touches climatic changes in glacial times or in prehistoric times, which changes have been established beyond question.
 The Worlds Coal Supply.
 Of the 650,o00, ,O00 tonsso coal which the entire worlds supply one-third is taken from the coal mines of the United States. The British Isles produce 21S,oo0, 900 tons, Germany 124, ,0o0,0 ,000, and the other European na- tions make up, in a few million tons each the rest. Spain contributes 20,- 000,00 to the sum total, which amount is not sufficient for even home con- China, though rich In nat ural deposits, mines but little of her coal because of her use of primitive methods. It is prophesied that the in troduction of British mechanical appli- ances in Chinese fields will send lip her