`If the law supposes that," says Mr Bumble when he is told in Oliver Twist that his miscreant wife will be presumed by a court of law to be acting directly under his instructions, "then the law is a ass - a idiot. If that's the eye o' the law, the law is a bachelor."
Mr Bumble's observations have relevance when it comes to some of the laws that deal with tampering with the weather. As we have seen during the past day or two in "Weather Eye", every now and then results from "weather modification" experiments are reported which are sufficiently encouraging to re-enkindle the enthusiasm of those who believe that rain can be extracted by artificial means from clouds that might otherwise stay dry.
Even the most optimistic proponents of weather modification accept that it can only be successful in a very small way. The amounts of energy involved, even for very small-scale atmospheric processes, are so vast that any human input can only act as a catalyst, as a stimulus to trigger something which was perhaps just about to happen anyway. Most effort nowadays tends to be concentrated either on cloud seeding - to enhance rainfall or to suppress hail - or in the area of fog dispersal by artificial means.
But there is a "downside risk" to all activities like these. The extent to which they may be beneficial may be a very subjective matter; successful attempts to enhance rainfall may be a good thing for the farmer who needs more rain, but what about his next-door neighbour whose crops need less, not more, precipitation?
Such problems do not bother us Europeans very much, because there is very little activity of this kind in these parts. But the Americans take the whole thing rather more seriously. Of the 50 American states, 28 have laws on their statute books to control attempts at weather modification. Some require licensing, others require that public notice be given of any such activity, while not a few require that those engaged in the exercise accept full liability for any unfavourable consequences which may arise. Moreover, since 1971, federal law requires that exercises of this kind must be reported in advance to the federal government.
But then, enter Mr Bumble. The stringent laws on weather modification of Oklahoma make one important exception: all religious ceremonies are specifically exempted from controls - so the native Americans are free to perform their rain dance in Oklahoma without fear that the full rigour of state law may descend upon their feathered heads.