100 YEARS AGO

Hailstorm Artillery. In the absence of any recognised English equivalent for the expressive German term Das Wetterschiessen, I have thought it best in the heading of this article to avoid a literal translation of it lest it should give rise to misunderstanding. 'Weather shooting' does not refer to any haphazard or empirical attempts to foretell the weather, but to a practice which has lately come to have great vogue in Styria, Italy and elsewhere of firing off charges of gunpowder to protect the vineyards against injury from hail. So popular indeed has the practice become in some districts that there is danger of the cost of protection exceeding that of any damage likely to be caused by the hail. The idea that the weather can be affected by the discharge of gunpowder is not a new one. There have been various traditions of rain falling after, and presumably in consequence of, the cannonade of a battle... Weather shooting as now practised has, however, a more definite purpose than merely causing rain. Its object is to prevent the downpour of hail by shooting when thunder or hail clouds threaten. The recent development, which has spread very widely, is most conspicuously represented by the arrangements of Bürgermeister Stiger, of Windisch-Feistritz, in Styria, where they were originally introduced in 1896 in the form of a vine-dressers' volunteer artillery.

From Nature 13 June 1901.

50 YEARS AGO

Profile of Science. Setting out unashamedly to interest those who would not touch a 'scientific' book, Ritchie Calder must be congratulated on the adventurous nature of his approach. He is aware that most people are interested in the biographical details of famous men and uses this as the way to introduce the four main subjects of the atom, radar, penicillin and vitamins. Each topic is complete in itself, and is portrayed in relation to its general scientific background; the story of penicillin, for example, is cunningly interspersed with accounts of the invention of the microscope, the discovery of germs and chemical therapeutics as well as up-to-date information about more recent investigations with antibiotics like streptomycin, chloromycetin and aureomycin... Perhaps the only criticism that can be made of his excellent impressionistic book is that occasionally the popular style becomes a little too 'hail-fellow-well-met' for those with more retiring natures.

From Nature 16 June 1951.