Chapter X: Climate and Weather

Climate is a Theory. Weather is a condition.

Or, to make it clearer to the reader, Climate is a Hypothesis and Weather is a _Reductio ad Absurdum_. This explains why it invariably snows for the first time in years whenever one goes to California.

What is the Weather for?

Everything in Nature is designed to contribute to the needs or pleasures of Mankind.

From the tree of the forest we get the wood from which the nutmeg is made, the wood-alcohol for our Scotch high-ball and the pulp for our newspaper, which, in turn, is transmuted to leather for the soles of our soldiers' boots.

From the sands of the sea we make sugar for sweetening our coffee--that mysterious beverage, the secret of whose manufacture has never been revealed.

From the cotton plant comes the woolen under-garment and the soldier's blanket.

From the lowly cabbage springs the Havana Perfecto, with its gold and crimson band, and from the simple turnip is distilled the golden champagne, without which so many lives will now be empty.

Even the humble straw has its uses--to indicate the trend of the air current and for the stuffing of the life-preserver.

What then is the use of the Weather?

Supposing you have made a globe and put some people upon it to live. What would you do to make them feel at home?

You would give them something to talk about.

Just so--the Weather was designed to furnish a universal topic of conversation for Man.

Without the Weather, 999,999 out of 1,000,000 conversations would die in their infancy.

In the first geography book we learn from Moses how and of what the Weather was made.

Since then, nothing has been so much talked about as the Weather, and in nothing has so little advance been made.

_QUESTIONS_

_Is it notoriety that makes the Weather-Vane?_

_Where does the Winter-Resort in Summer? And why?_

_How many litres of champagne can be extracted from the cube-root of one turnip?_

_What did the Weather do to get herself so talked about?_