Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1913-10-12

freezing drops of rain crystalline. Savants
of the French Academy have come to dit
ferent conclusion They believe that cleo
tricity in the air is the real cause OF hail
storms Since the winegrowers OF France
annually lose between twenty and thirty
million dollars through hallstorms, the
French government has set about on an elab-
crate scale to test the new theory by actual
practice.
The plan is to erect gigantic lightning rods
of copper at intervals along the track OF
these violent storms in the belief that a
copper point high in the air will gather such
an immense amount of static electricity
Qiehtning) as to prevent the formation OF
hail. The rods are hundred and thirty feet
high, terminating in a sharp point, and are
guyed in much the same way as wireless
mast The bottom end IS buried deep IN
some flowing stream, so as to give the pest
of connection for the lightning charge to
smother itself in the bowels of the earth. In
many of the wine growing districts these
rods are being erected six to the mile, and
after a year of observation scientists are
coming to the conclusion that at length they
have found the secret of hail, and learned
the best means of combating it. In any
event. the districts protected by these gl-
ga1ltic lightning rods suffered less during the
last season than in many years heretofore,
and the government is going ahead planting
these tall copper spikes on big scale.
The discovery is of special interest to Con-
necticut River Valley tobacco growers. The
history of tobacco growing in that section
is one of advance and retreat before the on
slaught of terrific hailstorms. The Farming
ten River Valley, tributary of the Con-
necticut, was at one time engaged almost
exclusively in tobacco growing; but now on
the upper reaches of the river it has been
abandoned almost entirely because hall
storms ruin the crop year after year.
When tent grown tobacco was introduced
into Connecticut the cry was raised that at
length a suitable means of protection had
been devised against the ravages OF hail.
Thousands of acres were put under tent,
as the saying goes, along both sides OF the
river, and for several years the industry
thrived. The "tents" fiat coverings of
loosely woven canvas stretched on wires nine
feet off the ground) seemed to furnish at once
protection from the hail and to provide a pc
culiar humidity that enabled the growers to
produce Havana and a Sumatra leaf equal
in grade to the native product Land that
had gone begging at ten dollars an acre rose
to valuation of thousand dollars, and the
first pickings of the crop, the No. grade,
several times touched market price OF four
dollars a pound, while the run cost sixty
cents TO produce.
During the last two years, however, all of
the vaunted protection against hailstorms
claimed for the "tent' has been ruthlessly
swept aside and brought catastrophe in its
wake. In several instances the acres of solid
cloth covering the high-priced tobacco fields
acted as nests for the fast-falling hail, hold
ing the icy particles together until they
could freeze solid one against another, thus
accommodating in weight until the mass
crashed through the canvas as solid sheets
of ice In the late summer of 1911 there
were two storms that cut heartrending
swaths through the luxuriant, seven-foot-
TALL tropical plants, smothering frequently
patches as large as forty acres in area at one
crash.
That is why Connecticut is watching
France, and wondering if the tiny electron,
infinitely smaller than the tiniest of dust
particles, is after all, the nuclei of hail
stones; and, what is more to the point,
they are wondering if these electric charges
can be swept from the skies and rendered
innocuous by simple arrangement of tall
copper spikes stuck up in the ground.
Electrical Resistance
THE solution of the problem of electric
transmission offers the biggest rewards