ARTICIAL RAIN-MAKING.

Inangahua Times, Volume VII, Issue 1061, 15 March 1882, Page 2

ARTICIAL RAIN-MAKING.

» ■ ■ ■ Professor Pepper (writes the Australian correspondent of the Otago Daily Times has set up as a professional rainmaker in Queensland. He has developed a plan for bringing the weather under control, and for the consequent annihilation of droughts. His Australian experience has shown him that clouds in this part of the worldspear in the sky with reasonable regularity, but have a provoking liabn of disappearing again without again without having disgorged their contents. Science, is to be brought to hear upon them, with the view of producing a better state of things. The professor it is said, proposes to extract the electricity from the clouds by mean of a huge kite bristling with needles and connected with the earth by an an iron wire. Then he will utilise any heavy artillery the Colonial Government may possess to shell the cloud until it fall in rain. Hie enthusiastic rain m&er 1 pooh-poohs the idea of danger from the use of explosives. He ctXMktart that the chances are 100 to 1 against In ' consequence of the general dearth of population in large squatting or sugar . district, no satisfactory trial of this i novel scheme has yet been made, and the clergy of Brisbane, with their customary intolerance of ail scientific tenth, still prefer to assemble for united prayer when rain is badly wanted ; but notwithstanding this discouragement, the professor may yet float a company to test his plan, for if it proved successful he could safely promise the shareholders good dividends.