concludes: "Sunday.—So to my office, there to write down my journall, and take leave of my brother, whom I send back this afternoon, though raining; which it hath not done a good while before."
After reading this, we turn to the account of the burning of Moscow. But this occurred in September, and the equinoctial gales were blowing fiercely at the time. If we look into the history of land and sea fights, we find many striking and apparent confirmations of the truth of the popular belief. Froude concludes his description of the fight at Flores, 1591, as follows: "Nor did the matter end without a sequel awful as itself." Sea-battles have been often followed by storms, and without a miracle; but with a miracle, as the Spaniards and the English alike believed, or without one, as we moderns would prefer believing. "There ensued on this action a tempest so terrible as was never seen or heard the like before." The human mind is undoubtedly prone to connect great calamities together, and to believe that the one following depended in some mysterious way upon the one preceding.
We turn now to the great fire at Chicago. It was telegraphed to London, England, that "this fire was chiefly checked on the third or fourth day by the heavy and continuous down-pour of rain, which, it is conjectured, was partly due to the great atmospheric disturbances which such an extensive fire would cause, especially when we are told that the season just previous to the outbreak of the fire had been particularly dry." In an article published in the "Journal of the Franklin Institute," July, 1872, by Prof. I. A. Lapham, assistant to the Chief-Signal Officer U. S. A., entitled "The Great Fires of 1871 in the Northwest," we find the following in regard to the burning of Chicago: "During all this time—twenty-four hours of continuous conflagration upon the largest scale—no rain was seen to fall, nor did any rain fall until four o'clock the next morning; and this was not a very considerable 'down-pour,' but only a gentle rain, that extended over a large district of country, differing in no respect from the usual rains. The quantity, as reported by meteorological observers at various points, was only a few hundredths of an inch. It was not until four days afterward that any thing like a heavy rain occurred. It is therefore quite certain that this case cannot be referred to as an example of the production of rain by a great fire. Must we therefore conclude," says Prof. Lapham, "that fires do not produce rain, and that Prof. Espy was mistaken in his theory on that subject? By consulting his reports (Fourth Report, 1857, p. 29), it will be found that he only claimed that fires would produce rain under favorable circumstances of high dewpoint, and a calm atmosphere. Both of these important conditions were wanting at Chicago, where the air was almost entirely destitute of moisture, and the wind was blowing a gale. To produce rain, the air must ascend until it becomes cool enough to condense the moisture, which then falls in the form of rain. But here the heated air could not ascend very far, being forced off in nearly an horizontal direction
