s expressly designed by the Creator that the
moon should not interfere materially with this atmospheric machinery. She
is the nearest orb; her influence would be controlling and continuous;
would follow her monthly path from south to north, and with changes too
violent, and intervals too long; and would interfere with the regular
fundamental operation in the trade-wind region, where she is _vertical_.
Aside from the attraction of gravitation, therefore, she seems to have
been so created as to be incapable of exerting any influence. She is
without an atmosphere; the rays which she reflects are polarized, and
without chemical or magnetic power; and, if it be true that Melloni has
recently detected heat in them, by the use of a lens three feet in
diameter, which could not previously be effected, its quantity is
exceedingly small, and incapable of influence. Doubtless, the attraction
of her mass is felt upon the earth, as the tides attest; and upon the
atmosphere as well as the ocean. But the atmosphere is comparatively
_attenuated_, and exceedingly so at its upper surface. Her attraction,
therefore, although felt, is not influential. She seemed, to Dr. Howard,
to produce in her northing and southing, a lateral tide which the
barometer disclosed, but owing to the attenuated character of the
atmosphere, neither the sun nor moon create an easterly and westerly tide,
that is observable, except with the most delicate instruments. Sabine is
believed to have detected such a tide by the barometer, at St. Helena, of
one four thousandth of an inch. But even this _infinitesimal influence_
may prove an error upon further investigation. There is a diurnal
variation of the barometer, but it is not the result of her attraction,
for it is not later each day as are the tides, exists in the deepest mines
as well as upon the surface, and is demonstrably connected with the
_group_ of _diurnal_ changes produced by the action of the sun-light and
heat upon the earth's magnetism.

Can the lateral tide, if there be one, affect the weather? for in the
present state of science it seems entirely certain that the moon can exert
an influence in no other way.

If the received idea of many, perhaps most, meteorologists, on which all
wheel barometers are constructed, that a _high barometer_ necessarily
produces _fair weather_, and a _low one foul_, were true, she certainly
might do so. But that idea can not be sustained, and there is no known
certain in