Chambers's Pocket Miscellany (Volume 7)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854. Excerpt: ... The ingenious writer of these papers, after exhibiting the fallacy of such axioms as these, proceeds to examine the justice of the very common notion, that' a change of weather accompanies a change of the moon.' The long train of scientific reasoning which follows on this subject would occupy too much of our space, and we shall content ourselves, therefore, with stating the conclusion to which the writer arrives. 'From all that has been stated, it follows then, conclusively, that the popular notions concerning the influence of the lunar phases on the weather have no foundation in theory, and no correspondence with observed facts. That the moon, by her gravitation, exerts an attraction on our atmosphere, cannot be doubted; but its effects are either too small in amount to be appreciable in the actual state of meteorological instruments, or they are obliterated by other more powerful causes, from which they have not yet been eliminated.' The notion, therefore, that a change is to be looked for at full and now moon, venerable as that notion is from its antiquity and the universality of its acceptation, receives no countenance from the results of scientific inquiry. The supposed influence of the moon is not confined to the weather. Gardeners in some countries have an idea that the red moon kills the young sheots of plants. The red moon is that which is full between the middle of April and the close of Slay. Now, in charging such a moon with an injurious effect on plants, the accusers simply mistake a sign for a cause. Plants are hilled frequently at that season as if by frosts, theugh, on the nights when the death takes place, a thermometer in the open air may stand many degrees above the freezing-point. Observing this to be the case, gardeners can see no cau...