“Fire,” continued our friend, “was one of the first foes subdued. We quite early learned to make our habitations and everything about us of fireproof materials, and, if I mistake not, you on the earth will not long endure an enemy which can be so easily put down. You will find all materials can be so treated with chemicals as to be absolutely safe from the flames. We have fire only when and where we desire it. “When you speak of famines you touch a more difficult subject, but here, too, time and skill have wrought wonderful changes. In our histories we read of the time when the weather was chiefly noted for its fickleness, and when some parts of our globe were mere desert wastes, where rain was unknown and no life could exist. And in the inhabited portions one section would often be deluged with too much rain while another would have none, both conditions leading to a failure in agriculture and much consequent suffering. A long time was spent in gathering statistics, which finally proved that if the rainfall were distributed there would be just about enough to water sufficiently the whole surface of the globe. Nature provided rain enough, but it did not always fall where and when it was most needed. It seemed to be left with us to find a remedy for this apparent evil. When I say ‘us’ in this way I mean our race as a whole, for most of these changes took place many ages ago. “Our philosophers had seen so many difficulties removed and improvements made in things supposed to be fixed that they began, once upon a time, to assert that rain and snow and the weather in general ought to be subject to our will. They said that in the advanced state of civilization toward which we were progressing it would seem to be an anomalous thing that we should continue to be subjected to the annoyances of so changeable a tyrant as the weather. We seemed destined to gain control of so many of the forces of nature that our future mastery in this department looked to them reasonable. For a long time these views appeared fanciful to the many, but this did not deter a few enthusiasts from study and experiment. As knowledge and skill increased we began, little by little, to gain control of the elements; but do not imagine it was anything less than a slow and laborious work. “First, as we learned something of the laws which control the precipitation of the moisture suspended in the atmosphere, we discovered a way to produce rain by mechanical means. As this discovery was gradually developed we found we had really solved the problem. For, as there was only a certain amount of moisture taken up into the air, the quantity of rain could not be increased nor diminished, and so when we made it rain in one place it was always at the expense of the rainfall somewhere else.