It may even be a fact that on account of the observed influence of the Moon upon the physical system of man, the ancients said that it ruled “the populace,” and made of it a common significator of public affairs. For it must be remembered that the belief in lunar influence in mundane affairs, ordinarily presumed to be of human origination and under human control, was prevalent before the days of printing and encyclopædic knowledge, possibly before the art of writing was invented, and men then depended entirely on their powers of observation for whatever knowledge they had. As many of the ancient astronomical statements will show, their powers of observation were almost the equal of our scientific instruments. Thus Dr. Pouchet rightly says: “Hipparchus and Ptolemy had no instruments to scrutinize the heavens with. The astronomers of the Renaissance, such as Regiomontanus, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler, were scarcely more favoured, and yet how many immortal discoveries do we owe to them! They seem with their lynx eyes to have seen or divined everything!” They observed not only the courses of the stars and planets as well as those of the luminaries, but what is of more human interest, they watched the effects that these bodies had upon the course of human events and upon nations and persons. That the Moon influenced the weather was the logical deduction from the fact of its influence upon the waters of the earth. For obviously the Moon must not only be water-lifter, but also a cloud-lifter, and its effects upon the atmosphere itself must be in proportion to the saturation point of the air from hour to hour according to the incidence of its rays. Only when all meteorological methods have failed to indicate the kind of weather we are likely to have, to predict the kind of summer we shall have, or even to explain such as we have, then men throw about for new ideas, and frequently manage to seize upon old ones. This of the Moon’s influence on the weather is one such. I have this following note of intelligence from the _Daily Mail_ of the 14th August last: “The tides follow the Moon; local weather conditions are indisputably affected by the tides. Scientific meteorologists no doubt laugh the belief to scorn, but observers who are not scientific can produce sufficient data to prove that a change of weather coinciding with a change of the Moon is usually lasting.” The _Daily Mail_ is right. But unfortunately the theory of the Moon’s influence on the weather has been badly distorted since the learned and observant Dr. Clark took the matter in hand and formulated a theory based on observations conducted over a very long period.