UIHistories Project: A History of the University of Illinois by Kalev Leetaru
N A V I G A T I O N D I G I T A L L I B R A R Y
Bookmark and Share



Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871 [PAGE 159]

Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1871
This is a reduced-resolution page image for fast online browsing.


Jump to Page:
< Previous Page [Displaying Page 159 of 372] Next Page >
[VIEW ALL PAGE THUMBNAILS]




EXTRACTED TEXT FROM PAGE:



151 seem impossible that our thousands of miles of railroads and canals &hd telegraph wires, uniting all the great seas and oceans of the globe as they were never before united, either by Water currents or iron rails, or both, and forming quick and ready conductors of electrical currents over the dry and parched summer earth, the whole globe around, and throwing their heavy iron arms abroad, for tens of thousands of miles, in all directions over the continents—I say it will not seem impossible that our canals and railroads should at last be found to be powerful in new distributions of the rainfall, as well as in that of goods and merchandise. It is, at all events, a subject that deserves the close attention of our philosophers and economists. Indeed, I think it hardly possible that so subtile and instantaneous an element as electricity, and other cloud-gathering and distributing forces, should be otherwise than very materially affected by interlacing the whole surface of the earth with such first-rate, continuous and uninterrupted conductors of electricity. I believe that no train of railroad cars was ever known to be struck with lightning, in the history of the world; which in itself shows how easily and surely those iron tracks, in fact, dispose of this erratic and vagrant, but still resistless force. The burning of forests and the cannonading of armies and cities, seem also to produce marked effects on climate, and especially on the local rainfall. I watched these effects with great interest during our last war; and more usually after a great battle, the papers reported a heavy rain storm as the speedy result. Very soon, last fall, after the seige of Strasburg by the Germans commenced in earnest, the papers reported that the unparalleled drought in that part of France was wholly broken up, the river rose in hight, and even their cellars were fired with water, a state of things wholly unprecedented at that season of the year. So common and almost uniform have these results been in all wars, that it has incited the belief in many minds that drought might be practically broken up and local rainfalls excited by simply firing of cannon, as well as by the burning of forests. And when we reflect that these southwest counter-trade winds, laden with moisture, are almost incessantly passing over our heads, just above the thin strata of the lower surface currents, and gliding in opposite directions in immediate contact with them, and that all that is really wanted at almost any time, to produce rain, is simply to compel these two repellant currents to intermingle with each other, by some mechanical force, or by working some change in their electrical relations to each other, I con* fess that I am inclined to the opinion that this may not only be practically, but most profitably done; especially when we consider what vast