Lamb's Chinamen who practised the burning of their houses for
several centuries before finding out that there was any cheaper
way of securing the coveted delicacy of roast pig.

But how, it may be asked, shall we deal with the fact that Mr.
Dyrenforth's recent explosions of bombs under a clear sky in Texas
were followed in a few hours, or a day or two, by rains in a
region where rain was almost unknown? I know too little about the
fact, if such it be, to do more than ask questions about it
suggested by well-known scientific truths. If there is any
scientific result which we can accept with confidence, it is that
ten seconds after the sound of the last bomb died away, silence
resumed her sway. From that moment everything in the air--
humidity, temperature, pressure, and motion--was exactly the same
as if no bomb had been fired. Now, what went on during the hours
that elapsed between the sound of the last bomb and the falling of
the first drop of rain? Did the aqueous vapor already in the
surrounding air slowly condense into clouds and raindrops in
defiance of physical laws? If not, the hours must have been
occupied by the passage of a mass of thousands of cubic miles of
warm, moist air coming from some other region to which the sound
could not have extended. Or was Jupiter Pluvius awakened by the
sound after two thousand years of slumber, and did the laws of
nature become silent at his command? When we transcend what is
scientifically possible, all suppositions are admissible; and we
leave the reader to take his choice between these and any others
he may choose to invent.

One word in justification of the confidence with which I have
cited established physical laws. It is very generally supposed