WEATHER REFORM.
SIR,—Acquiescence in the state of the weather is no longer comme il faut. Bombarding the Empyrean is as little regarded as throwing stones at monkeys, that they may make reprisals with cocoa-nuts; yet the success of the rain-makers is very doubtful. Their premisses even are disallowed by many considerable authorities. The little experiment which I propose to submit to the meteorological officials is founded on a fact of universal experience, and, if successful, would be of immense utility. Every smoker must be aware that the force of the wind varies inversely as the number of matches. On an absolutely still day, with a heavy pall of fog over the streets, the striking of the last match to light a pipe is invariably accompanied by a breeze, just strong enough to extinguish the nascent flame. Now if two or three thousand men simultaneously struck a last match, the resulting wind would be of very respectable strength—anemometer could tell that.
My proposal then, is this. When anticyclonic conditions next prevail, and the great smoke-cloud incubates its cletch of microbes, let some 5,000 men, provided at the public expense with a pipe of tobacco and one match each, be stationed in the City, at every corner and along the streets, like the police on Lord Mayor's Day. At a given signal, say the firing of the Tower guns, each man strikes his match. Judging from the invariable result in my own case, this would be followed by 5,000 puffs of wind of sufficient strength to extinguish the lights, or, better still, to give the 5,000 men some thirty seconds of intense anxiety, while the wind plays between their fingers and over their hands and round the bowls of their pipes. Multiplying the men by the seconds (5,000 x 30) you get approximately the amount of the wind, in wear and tare and tret. If this experiment were conducted on a duly extensive scale round London; say at Brixton, Kensington, Holloway and Stepney; there can be no doubt that a cyclone would be established, and the fog effectually dissipated. The cost would be slight, and the pipe of tobacco would afford a welcome treat to many a poor fellow out of work in these hard times.
Yours obediently,
PETER PPIPER.
The Cave, Æolian Road, S.W.