The efforts of modern weather-makers have been directed especially to two objects; viz., the production of rain and the prevention of hailstorms. In the United States a certain amount of ingenuity has also been devoted to the task of dispelling tornadoes. Some years ago a device for the latter purpose was patented, consisting of a box, containing explosives, mounted on a pole and erected a mile or so to the southwestward of the village to be protected from these unwelcome visitors. The force of the wind was expected to detonate the explosives by driving a movable board against percussion caps. The inventor believed that a violent explosion would disperse the passing tornado funnel. Apart from the fact that a single installation of this character, or even several of them, would seldom happen to be at exactly the right spot to explode close to the relatively small vortex of a tornado, the effect of the explosion, even in the very heart of the storm, would certainly be negligible. The energy that keeps the tornado in action is supplied continuously from a level far above the earth, while the disturbance due to the explosion would be only momentary. Above all, the energy developed in any discharge of explosives that the community could afford to pay for would be quite insignificant compared with that which prodigal nature supplies to the tornado. The same disproportion between the giant forces at work in the atmosphere and the pygmy forces at the disposal of mankind is a point that is overlooked in most attempts at weather-making. The widespread belief that rain can be produced by explosions rises so far above the level of ordinary popular delusions that it has sometimes led to large expenditures of money on the part of drought-ridden communities and even of national governments. Perhaps the most remarkable example of official confidence in the efficacy of this process was that furnished some years ago by the Volksraad, or legislative assembly, of the Transvaal, which passed a law forbidding the bombardment of the clouds to produce rain, on the ground that the rain-makers were thwarting the will of the Almighty!